Ebb Tide Ch. 01

"It's cool," I grinned. "Have they paid you off yet?"

"Aaahhh...no," he stammered. "I only got half. I'll get the other half...after you take the call."

"Take my advice and be happy with half and your life. Your employers aren't the 'loose ends' kind of outfit," I cautioned him. By the look in his eyes, he was going to take that advice.

"Good evening," I spoke into the phone.

"Listen up, you fucker," Pablo seethed.

The slur in his words indicated he was abusing his pain-killers. The doctor had probably told him to take it easy for two weeks and allow the bone to start healing. The dumbass was going to do more damage to himself than what I had inflicted on him.

"Listening," I curtly replied.

"Start walking toward 'Bonanza' (a tourist trap to the south).A car is going to pick you up," he seethed.

"Not going to happen," I snorted in amusement.

"Dude, Dabney's not going to like that answer," he sneered. That was the point where my plan truly sucked. From the moment I found out that Pablo had Dabney, I knew that Circe's middleman was going to have the pimp kill us both. Pablo was a sadist. That meant, no matter what I did, Dabney was going to suffer before she died.

Had Dabney just waited at my house until I cornered Pablo and made him see reason...but she hadn't and we were now in this predicament. Rushing in might get me killed. Dabney was far more likely to be a casualty in the cross-fire which would make the entire drama an exercise in futility.

Following Pablo's instructions wasn't going to deliver any better probabilities as I'd be fighting entirely on his terms. The sad, anti-macho, non-White Knight Reality was that Dabney was about to go through a truckload of pain and suffering that I couldn't do anything about. I didn't blame Dabney. She'd been scared to death. I didn't blame myself.

He'd taken liberties with Dabney. I wasn't going to let him hurt her. Dabney had been my friend ~ no matter how long ago. I knew that breaking Pablo's collarbone would lead to escalating violence. I hadn't correctly predicted that Dabney's lack of trust in men who had abandon her far too often to a cruel fate would make her do this stupid thing.

Now Pablo was dead no matter what. All I could do was arrange events so that Dabney didn't join him. I had to seal my emotions away until this mission was completed.

"There isn't much I can do about that, but Pablo..." I started. I let that hang there.

"What?"

"Do you remember what I told you last night? About you touching Dabney ever again?"

"Big words, small prick," he mocked me.

"I'm glad we are clear about my warning," I removed the emotion from my voice. "Pablo, I know what you look like. I can find you whenever I wish."

"Asshole, you don't..."

"Here is how it is going to go down," I talked over him.

"You don't tell me to do shit, you -" and I hung up. I crossed the street at the light, multi-tasking the pedestrian traffic while I opened up the phone's innards. It rang again once I was on the other/east side of the street.

"Here is what you are -" I belted out my refrain.

"Motherfucker!" Pablo yelled. "If you hang up one more time, Dabney's dead." Pablo was the kind of low-life for which lying and self-deception over his own importance came easy. He couldn't even tell that he was lying to himself. His was an empty threat. He needed Dabney, but he was too drugged up to realize that I clearly knew he needed her to get at me.

"If you want to spend a long time dying, by all means let me know," I bantered. Let him get angry. I was configuring the device with additions of my own, to discover his general location via cell towers. Keeping him talking was exactly what I wanted.

"You are a dead man," he threatened. "When I my hands on you -"

"You mean your right hand, right?" I reminded him. "I doubt your left hand can even wrap around your tiny nub of a cock."

"Fucker, you are going to be the one who is 'a long time dying'," he yapped.

By the tone of his voice, I could tell he was aggravating the repair work the surgeon had done on his shoulder. Even more pain-killers were in his immediate future. He might even overdose before I got a hold of him.

"You can go back to your boss empty-handed if you like," I mused. "I think we both know how your operation handles failure."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" he attempted to both regain the momentum in our conversation while covering up his fear.

"Here is how it is going to go down," I began again.

"Mother-fucker, I -" and I hung up on him again. The phone rang. I had his location down to ten meters.

In most cases, a cellular signal bounced off at least two towers. In urban areas it could be as many as four. The signal bounced off the towers at different nano-seconds because of the difference in distance between the tower and the phone. It is the art of electronic triangulation. He was on the Strip, maybe three blocks south of my current location...moving northward - plenty of time for me to get back to my car.

The phone rang again.

"Fucker," he growled. "How's this." I heard Dabney scream in pain as a stun gun went off. "You want to hear that again?"

"Not really. Now here is how it is going to -" I was cut off by Dabney screaming once more.

"I can do this all night long, Fucker," Pablo taunted me.

"I'll keep this portion of our conversation in mind," I responded.

"Good," his voiced dripped with victory - idiot.

"Here is how it is going to go down -" I tried yet again. Dabney screamed. I hung up.

I had to get into my car anyway. I had the belief I was going to be needing my gun and a blade this evening. I pocketed a few extra magazines - best be prepared. Pablo was definitely not alone. The phone rang.

"Vance!" Dabney sobbed in pain. "Please Vance, do what they say." The phone changed hands.

"Fucker, you are going to -" Pablo got out.

"Put Dabney back on the phone, Pablo," I requested. Dabney screamed. I hung up. I was paying the parking fee when the phone rang again.

"Don't you fucking -" Pablo was losing it.

"Dabney," I repeated my request.

"Fucker -" and I hung up yet again. I drove past the vehicle I suspected held Pablo and company. A gold-flecked Suburban with spinning rims. That baby could hold eight people easily plus plenty of back space. I noted the license plate. At the next stoplight, I accessed the LVMPD database thanks to those two detectives inadvertently giving me their passwords last night. The phone rang yet again.

"Vance," Dabney whimpered. "They are hurting me...please..."

"You hang up again and she dies. We will get you later," Pablo assured me.

"Put Dabney back on the phone," I reiterated my request.

"Fine," he snapped. "She's dead. You are dead too, when I catch you."

I hung up. If they were going to kill Dabney, she'd be dead already. If I acceded to their demands, they'd kill us both. Someone smarter than Pablo knew they needed her around as 'proof of life' to lure me in. The license plate belonged to an entertainment group. I went over a list of various properties, picking the closest, 'Vegas Fantasies'.

Officers Rothschild and Shell turned on their lights in two short flashes to let me know they were starving for my attention. I pulled to the side of the road, stashed the evidence of my illegal endeavor and muted the phone I'd been given. They got out and walked up to both sides of my ride.

"Mr. Vardanyan, I strongly suggest you come with us to meet the Assistant Sheriff right now," Rothschild said.

"Officer, I find myself on a tight time table at the moment, so I'm going to cut to the bare bones. You are exhibiting an abuse of power I find unsettling. I do not want to talk with your superior."

"Now, are you going to trump up an excuse to put me in custody and drag me before him, or not?" I related. "As I said, I'm on a tight schedule."

"Do you mind if we search your car?" Shell said from the passenger side door.

"Yes."

"Why don't you want to cooperate?" Shell grumbled. Rothschild had taken a mental step back.

"I am not civic minded. I find people I don't know making demands on my time to be an irritant. Then there is this fact: you two in particular can't seem to get it through your skulls that I am not interested in your proposal despite my many refusals," I articulated. "Tell your superior I was never inclined to talk to him and I'm even less interested after having you follow me around."

"You are armed," Rothschild reminded me. "That is justifiable cause for a search."

"Except I have a recording less than an hour old where I stated that I was both armed and had concealed carry permits for the weapons in question."

"We'll do it the hard way," Rothschild sighed. "License, registration and proof of insurance, please."

This was a traffic stop where my ability to protect my civil rights were more complicated. Yes, Officers Rothschild and Shell were violating my rights. No judge would side with me on the matter. I did as requested. They wasted five minutes verifying my information.

"I smell marijuana," Shell remarked.

"Do you really want to go down that road?" I met his gaze.

"What does that mean?" Rothschild heated up even as she returned my papers.

"Fabricating a criminal offense, bearing false witness and violating the spirit of the law for the sake of power, Officer Rothschild," I turned her way. "We both know this is what's going on."

"Your record says you were in the Navy - some sort of hospital orderly. I would have thought that you would appreciate the necessity of authority," she countered.

"I'm on a tight schedule," I regurgitated the answer. She pulled out a card and handed it over.

"I strongly suggest you arrange an interview with Assistant Sheriff Mahaulu soon - very soon," she encouraged me. I took the card.

"Done deal," I agreed. That was that. I made sure they drove off in one direction before I chose another. I had someone's life to save. At a store off the Strip, I paid an alcoholic to get himself two bottles of scotch for himself and a pack of road flares, one set of wire clippers, one tube of caulk and a canister of propane. The booze would kill the pre-requisite number of brain cells to make him a lousy witness. The rest was for the IED I was planning to make.

Members of any organized criminal venture had three vulnerabilities: their lives, their reputations and their cash-flow. Unlike normal enterprises, running to the law when someone was picking on you was self-defeating. If you did, you could end up behind bars, your rep was blown and you risked poverty as well as the wrath of your enemies.

That was why criminal gangs had enforcers. They answered violence with violence. If an opposing organization went after your money-makers, you went after theirs. If they killed one of yours, you took out two of theirs. That was what reputation was all about. Living under those restrictions left criminals exceedingly vulnerable to someone like me; a 'lone wolf avenger'.

That wasn't pompousness. It was terminology that came about in Columbia in the 1980's and 90's.Rogue police (sick of the corruption Pablo Escobar's Medellin Cartel had inspired with their drug money and terror campaigns), and relatives of those killed by that cartel got together in a group called Los Pepes.They began attacking the Medellin Cartel, exacting summary justice against its members.

They were not 'lone' as in single individuals. 'Lone' meant a person, or small group, engaged in criminal activities solely against criminals (including corrupt officials) without concern for personal profit of any kind. Their prime motivation was vengeance, so they were referred to as 'lone wolf avengers'.

Pablo called me five times during the second cop shakedown and my shopping trip. He ranted three times to voice mail. The fourth time I picked up, he started to rant again, I asked for Dabney, didn't get her so I hung up. The fifth time...

"Vance," Dabney whimpered.

"Dabney, I know you are in pain and scared witless," I soothed her. "I want you to concentrate on my voice and my words. Can you do that?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"Pablo is a dead man. Every time you look at him, every time he hurts you, remember he is living out the last few hours of his life."

"Last few..." she muttered. Pablo took the phone.

"Okay Asshole, now I want you to listen carefully," he growled with barely contained fury.

"Listening."

"4941 Donavan Way - 25 minutes," he snarled.

"It will take me 45," I countered.

"25, or else..."

"Pablo, I've been driving south for the past fifteen minutes," I lied. "Unless you want me showing up driving like a bat out of Hell with a half-dozen cops on my ass, give me 45 minutes."

"45...46 and she's dead," he threatened.

"Pablo, I'm going to need proof of life now and right before I show up," I conditionally agreed. I wanted to make sure Dabney was around until I'd made my play. "The second time, I'm going to ask her a random question from our past, so don't start thinking you are brilliant."

"45 minutes, Asshole," he exulted in his hate. Forty-five minutes was more than enough time to enact my plan. It was sinfully easy. A masked man was about to break into a low-rent, advertises on the strip with business cards and flyerscall center. They have all kinds of computer systems which the site supervisor can disconnect from the network if the police or a competitor raided the building.

It was far less useful when a murderous psycho snuck up on her, put a gun to her head and gave her a choice: the codes, or her life. My first action was to caulk the fire door shut (so no one could escape out the back). Next came the locking of the front doors from the inside with the bike locks (the only other exit). Then I rounded up the staff, starting with the site supervisor.

I had the phone/website operators strip down to their underwear, packed them like sardines into a utility closet and got to work. I needed the system active so I could physically link it to my personal computer while accessing a certain black market website where my Dutch friend had left me something to download. This 'package' was a particularly nasty encryption virus uploading into their network.

Barring a super-computer, or a superb tech support unit working for a week, I owned that data. Last, but not least, I attached a time bomb to the virus. In a set amount of time ~ 4 hours in this case ~ the virus would hopelessly corrupt every system it was integrated with. When I uploaded this site's data to 'the Cloud', I also sent the 'raid' code, meaning this place was compromised and the data's security had a theoretical time limit before someone tracked it down.

Dutifully, someone watching the network would then transfer that information, and my virus, into the overall system; the one I suspected was physically located in a country whose laws kept their customers' secrets secret. In the physical world, Circe retained her legions of employees and tangible financial assets. In Cyberspace, she was informational-ly bankrupt. Client lists, employee lists, pay schedules and 'tax' recites were all in danger.

I wasn't going to war with Circe. I wanted to live and let live - sort of. What I wanted was a boon, a visiting peddler seeking favor from the Queen. If I had the chance, I'd hand her my codes allowing her to have everything back and all I wanted were three small favors well within her power to grant. I wanted Dabney set free, Pablo's head and for her to forget I ever existed.

In the final phase of this part of the operation, I set up my IED. I clipped off the nozzle of the caulking tube, used that to sabotage the propane canister's safety feature and set off the flare. I then encouraged ("this place is about to explode") my prisoners to follow me out the front door - I had the key to the bike lock - and we all fled for our lives. I took the bike lock with me. The building going boom in my rear-view mirror was a professionally satisfying sight.

It was no raging inferno, just enough to wreck the place for a few weeks, give Circe an immediate warning that something was wrong and allow the police to check out the place once the fire department was done ruining it with water hoses. Fires do a good job of destroying evidence. Firefighters do it better.

The only thing they could determine fully was what made up the IED and that led back to the rummy, who clearly couldn't' have done the deed. I was still heading for the rendezvous when the virus let me know it had been transferred into Circe network. My time had almost run out. I gave Pablo a call.

"Why aren't you here yet, Mother-fucker?" he snapped. He'd been doping up on pain-killers once more.

"Almost there. You might want to call your boss before you do something stupid, Pablo. I've made alternate arrangements since we last talked."

"I don't give a fuck," he slurred.

"Call the person who sent you after Dabney. Tell them you have a lead on what happened to 'Vegas Fantasies' ten minutes ago," I said. "As a token of faith, I'm still showing up. Part of the deal is that you let me talk to Dabney," I reminded him.

"Vance? Vance, are you coming?" she voiced her terror.

"Who was Ted Parker?" I was double checking. I doubted Pablo was smart enough to make a recording of her voice, but better safe than sorry.

"Ummm...aaahhh...that kid who pestered me in the fifth grade," she mumbled. "You showed me how to beat him up."

"You are the real Dabney," I tried to get her to relax. "Here I come." I stopped long enough to retrieve my ballistic vest from the trunk and put it on before rolling into the empty container yard.

There was the Golden Pimp-mobile. I parked my Audi so that the passenger side faced them. I scanned the area - no lookouts. Did the heat make people stupid? I didn't bother to hide the fact that I had an HK45 Compact Tactical pistol in my hand when I got out because a surprise at this moment would be detrimental to my plan. None of them appeared until after I did.

Pablo, left arm in a sling, got out of the rear passenger door on my side with a sawed-off double barrel shotgun in his right hand, moron. He was the guy I wanted to kill plus how did he plan to reload that scattergun?

The front passenger side door disgorged a big overweight white guy who had watched too many Godfather movies and belatedly realized I had a gun out and he didn't. The driver, coming around the front of their vehicle was tall, skinny and black - no weapon evident. The first guy around the rear of the SUV was Hispanic - Mac-11 - and the final guy was white as well.

He was dragging a terrified Dabney along with him by his left hand on her right elbow. He had the barrel of a chrome plated .357 Magnum pressed against the right side of her rib cage. Dabney looked like hell. That none of the damage to her face looked permanent was the best spin I could put on her predicament. As for the other guys...they weren't a gang, they were a crew.

Gangs tend to be racially-based. Crews are staffed by career criminals. The guy with the Mac was the leader. Pablo...they didn't work for Pablo. They worked for someone else as street-level muscle. That meant they were petty thieves, thugs and all-around bullies who weren't gifted with enough intellect to be involved in consistent money-making operations.

"Did you make that call?" I asked Pablo.

"Fuck you, Fucker," he snapped. "Put down the gun then we can talk." Like that was going to happen. "Put down the gun, or I waste the girl."

"I would take that to be a 'no'," I sighed.

"Do the rest of you know the shitload of trouble Pablo is in?" I addressed the crew. "The people upstairs are very angry with him." Oh, I knew they had no clue who the people 'upstairs' were. Here is how fear works ~ it was like swimming in crocodile-infested waters. Before long, you started seeing crocs everywhere.