Barry Eisler - The Detachment

“Mission accomplished,” he said. “Bought ’em from three different vendors with two different sets of ID, so they should be untraceable for as long as we’re likely to need ’em. No word from Larison and Treven?”

I shook my head. “Not yet. What else have you got in the bags?”

He reached inside and started removing the contents. “Exotic fruit salads, greens salads, various tasty wraps, some protein smoothies, the usual. Plus a six-pack of Red Bulls because, I don’t know about you, but I’m a bit peaked from our recent sojourn.”

I picked up one of the fruit salads. “Very thoughtful of you.”

“Well, with you on laundry detail, figured it was the least I could do. Did you bleach my whites and get my colors extra bright?”

I chuckled. “I think you’re going to have to settle for, it all at least smells clean.”

“Let me ask you something,” he said. “A little off topic. So, we snatch Mimi Kei. And tell old Horton we’re fixing to do harm to his daughter’s personage if he doesn’t play ball with the diamonds and otherwise. But what if we’re wrong about him? What if he doesn’t back down? How far are we willing to go? I mean, do we mail him a finger? An ear? What do we do?”

I nodded. “I know. I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

“I don’t mean to sound like I’m going soft on you, but I have some acquaintance with what it’s like to be held hostage, ‘hostage’ in this case meaning waterboarding, shocks to my legendary genitals, and threats to remove said legendary genitals with sharp instruments if a certain someone didn’t comply with my captors’ demands. Any of that ring a bell with you?”

He was talking about Hilger, who’d held Dox hoping to get to me. It hadn’t gone as Hilger had planned, but Dox suffered anyway.

“Yeah,” I said. “I know what you mean.”

“I’m just telling you, between the two of us, that I’m not comfortable hurting some girl who has nothing to do with any of this. I mean, my daddy taught me that gentlemen can kill each other, preferably with firearms, and that’s fine, but that we respect womenfolk. I’m sure that sounds fucked up to most of your more modern, egalitarian, self-actualized killers, but it’s how I was raised.”

“I hear you.”

“And I know you have a thing about no women and children, too.”

“Yes.”

“So…we’re just bluffing then.”

I nodded. “But I think when Horton understands Larison is involved in this, he won’t take the chance.”

“Well, that right there is the problem. See, I don’t think Larison is bluffing. I think that man-and no disrespect, ’cause he is obviously one capable sumbitch-I think he’s a little bit…Well, how do I put this. You know, some dogs, big dogs, they could kill you, but they don’t, because they’re good dogs. You can trust them. Other dogs, they’re looking at you, and you don’t know what the hell they’re thinking. Or which way it could go. That’s how Larison is to me. Any given moment, I don’t know what he’s going to do. I’m not sure even he knows.”

It interested me that each of them understood the other in canine terms. But I kept the thought to myself.

“Horton said something about Larison keeping too much hidden,” I said. “Being in turmoil.”

“Well, shit, everybody has something to keep hidden.”

“You have something to keep hidden?”

He grinned. “Just my midget porn fetish. Don’t tell anyone.”

“You and I are on the same page,” I said. “We’ll let Larison think what he wants, because the more scared Horton is, the better for us. But we’re not going to let him hurt anyone. If it comes to that, we’ll stop him.”

He nodded. “Thank you for that. I figured as much. Just wanted to make sure.”

We pulled our own clothes out of the pile of clean stuff and ate some of the provisions Dox had brought in. Then he napped while I watched the door, the Supergrade in hand. I watched the angle of the sun on the window curtains get increasingly sharp, and still no sign of Larison or Treven. Dox woke up and it was my turn to sleep while he stood sentry.

At a little past six, I was awakened instantly from a light sleep by three sharp knocks. I took a position on one side of the door, the Supergrade up and ready, while Dox opened it. It was Larison.

“Treven’s on the way,” he said. “Good news. I’ll wait until he’s here and then brief you. Is that grub? I’m starving.”

He grabbed a wrap and started devouring it. Treven showed fifteen minutes later. While he tucked in, too, Larison briefed us.

“We went online,” Larison said. “And found only four summer classes at the school. And only one on screenwriting, which is her thing. So we staked out the building where the class is held.”

“You see anyone?” I asked. “Anyone who looked like they were looking for us?”

“Hell yes,” Treven said. “We saw them-two of them-hanging out exactly where we would have been hanging out if we were trying to get to us.”

Larison said, “So we made sure not to be where we would have been if we’d known no one was looking for us.”

“The weird thing is, I understood all that,” Dox said.

“We picked up a couple of radios at a Radio Shack,” Larison said. “Not much range, but good enough for our purposes. We hung way back. Decided to take a chance, and it paid off.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “What kind of chance?”

“We don’t know how she gets to school,” Treven said. “Could be a car, could be a bus, could be a bicycle for all we know. We made Hort’s guys monitoring her building, so we couldn’t do the same. Which meant we had to take a guess. Car, bus, or bicycle. We guessed bus. We guessed right. Followed her onto an L.A. Metro bus.”

I still didn’t like it. “How’d you manage it without getting seen?”

“I staked out Hilgard and Charing Cross,” Larison said. “The stop right by the school.”

“And I waited at the next stop,” Treven said. “Hilgard and Sunset.”

“Totally lucky that it turns out she rides the bus,” Larison said. “But hey, sometimes you catch a break. When I saw her come out and wait at the Charing Cross stop, I radioed Treven. He got on at the next stop, right after her.”

“What about Horton’s guys?” I asked.

“One of them got on with her at Charing Cross,” Larison said. “The other stayed behind.”

I nodded. “So she’s definitely unwitting.”

“Right,” Larison said. “If she were witting, they’d both be staying close. Plus, she was wearing earbuds, listening to music, shit no bodyguard in the world would ever tolerate. As it was, the guy who got on with her was doing everything he could to keep away from her, and otherwise be unobtrusive. As we expected, they’re not trying to directly protect her, they’re trying to anticipate, and eliminate, the threat.”

I agreed with his assessment. “What else did you learn?”

Treven cracked a Red Bull. “I saw her get off at Sunset and Gordon. Hort’s guy got off with her. I waited and jumped out at the next one-Sunset and Bronson, otherwise Hort’s guy would have made me. But as the bus pulled away, I saw Kei walking north on a street called La Baig Avenue. If you look at La Baig-and we did, at an Internet place-you’ll see it leads to only two streets, Harold Way and Selma Avenue. The whole neighborhood looks super quiet, nothing but single family houses. No pedestrian traffic. No way to follow her, even if I’d gotten off at her stop, even if Hort’s guy hadn’t been there. So no way to get her exact address. But-”

“We don’t need her exact address,” I said. “Assuming she was going home on the bus, and not somewhere else, now we know her stop.”