MERCES LETIFER : THE END

Prologue 1.

The discussion was getting heated, as a man in a black suit sporting a stern trimmed corporate haircut, broad straight nose, a narrow, wolfish, dangerous looking forehead, generic features, and a pair of aviator glasses, moved from slide to slide, frozen in each frame, but every time out of focus, like a blurry apparition. The slides were useless to identify his face more precisely than that.

- Can we get a retinal scan on that? Some facial recognition or something?

- Okay, what the fuck! Why is Larry in this meeting?

Larry reached for a pencil. Willis took a long sip of his coffee. Stogov and Ryabinin stared across the table like predators ready to murder everyone. Ruslan was frantically keying in the meeting notes on the tablet.

- Do you see the quality on this? What is this, 1960? Is this the best we got? Security cameras in 800 by 600? No wonder you people get treated as non-factors.

- Hans, that's enough of your shit for today.

- I fucking quit. You treat international assassins like circus clowns. They'd bring a horse's head to your doorstep, and you wouldn't know it from a donkey's ass.

- Herr Warzeche, wurden Sie horen, bitte?

- Sie hat mir gesagt, diese Leute sind professionelle Agenten Betrieber operatorenn.

- You can tell McInnery all that, tomorrow. Right now, let's pretend not everyone is on American budget.

Old man McInnery was pleased with himself. Getting not twenty, not thirty, but fifty four national intelligence agencies working together like this was one of the shrewdest things he'd ever pulled. Surely, he'd work a trick or two in his day, but this... This was impressive, this was out of the park, it was honestly somewhat beyond his ability to manage. Thankfully he recruited good help. An international operation under a covered civilian front, and none of the UN's diplomatic bullshit, no forced O&M, extended capital. Finally together. No fuck games. Sure, there would be challenges. Getting the Russians, the Ukranians, the Japanese, the Chinese, and Jesus Christ, the Koreans and the Cubans in one room would have been enough to start a war already, but overall he was pleasantly surprised with the individual professionalism of the agents collected. It looked like most of the players took the game seriously and sent their A-quality people.

Sitting here were representatives of top intelligence agencies in the world. The ISI of Pakistan, RAW of India, the Mossad, the CIA, the MI6, the GRU, and the MSS.

Now they could kill some terrorists. Do some real damage. No more rules, just like the bad guys.

Today, though, was a challenging day. It was a day to summarize a challenging month. Everything pointed to the fact that Maniac made his move, but they had nothing.

- "Maniac" made his move, people. This man, guys. We need at least an ID.

All of them had nothing. Nobody had anything. Even the Russians didn’t, and he was supposed to be a former soviet operative. Everyone who had ties with him was permanently missing.

McInnery knew this, mostly. He knew Maniac to be an operator from his own era, back when they taught a man to chew his way out of a body bag. Such men did not make easy mistakes. But he wanted the team to work together and get used to consolidating data, work out their channels. He'd give them time. He was flying in the next day. The urgency was primarily bolstered by the fact that despite the lack of evidence, all his decades of intuition pointed, screaming, to a strong likelihood that Maniac has acquired an apprentice.

- How do you know it's even him?

- Because we have confessions of a man who hired him. Without anything useful, sadly.

- Arright. Lezz mayke Maniac top priarety.

- And then there's this one.

The man who was running the meeting pointed to a slide with a photograph of a frozen visage of a research base in the midst of an arctic desert. Snow covered mountains in the background dropping into the ocean. A hangar at night, with three projector lights catching a glimpse of a figure firmly clad in a winter suit with a fur lined hood drawn tightly around his head and a mask covering his face, revealing only a smudged strip of two exposed eyes, night vision goggles or something similar, thrown up just above the eyebrow line. Monochromatic in black and green, the picture left much to be desired. It gave no hint for the saboteur's eye color.

- Meet "Kenny".

There was a bit of laughter. Half the room didn't get the joke. South Park wasn’t a thing everywhere.

The man was a prodigy, a true martial arts talent. With winter gear and a set of holsters weighing him down, he jumped up, rotated his torso, and roundhouse kicked the dark blur of what appeared to be an incoming knife back at the forehead of what appeared to be a man dressed as a ninja in what now appeared to be Japan. He dispatched several opponents with their own weapons, before gunplay began. Which didn’t stop him either. This Kenny character seemed to prefer on site procurement of weapons. As a result, they didn’t even have a signature armament to go by. Great.

- Who's that one? Related?

- Isn't that a good question. A very different signature, yet a similar level of threat.

- So zere are two of zem nau?

- What do you think? Why hit the R&D complex at the very same time otherwise?

- So Maniac is not working alone?

- Unless that's Maniac.

- Very well could be, but they are two different people. This one's taller, see? If "Kenny" is Maniac, then the one at the airport and the embassy is someone else.

Big point on this being, two different guys.

- So now we're working two targets.

- Two confirmed. So far. Could be more.

- With no names, no prints, no DNA or profiles of any kind, other than the fact that they exist and active and a bunch of burnt outside facing fake identifies, which will never be reused.

- Yeah, we're kind of fucked.

There was uneasy laughter.

- Not necessarily. – came the French accent from the back of the room. It was Victoria Berger with the DGSE.

- What do you have for us, Vic?

- Unearthed archive records. One of Alexander Cayne and one was left from Albert Fournier.

- Two particularly talented investigators, who kept good networks before they got visited by our mutual friend. – Inserted Fouad Habib, the Pakistani officer. They all knew Him, whom he meant by ‘mutual friend’. Nobody liked Him, as that particular man’s appearance always meant trouble.

- Correct. Among them, there are two sets of video footage. Do you mind passing the projector remote? – Victoria slid her laptop closer.

Prologue 2.

The dim colors made the footage seem almost black and white, save for the overtone of yellow and dark green. A hidden camera mounted on a mercenary’s helmet. A jungle block post on a dirt road.

- This was taken in Colombia, four weeks after news of Pablo Ochoa’s death hit the highway. Our man did his best to get everyone’s faces.

The convoy of five “deuce and a half” trucks, the 35M 6x6 CTVs pulled up to the barricade, where a group of mixed black men with AK-74s slung across their shoulders gestured to disembark. Two of them already had their M-4 rifles at ready, pointing at the truck. Their field commander, a burly dark African-Spanish man in a red beret stepped forward, circling the index finger around. The outpost border guards started searching the trucks. Wait, no, not searching. Unloading. And nope, these were not border guards.

The driver of the lead truck opened the door and jumped down, approaching the field commander. He was wearing a different style camo pants and a grey tank top. A soviet army watch on the right hand. No tattoos. The camera man was so close to this driver, that he could see the field commander’s reflection in the driver’s wide reflective aviator glasses. He was a white man of modest average height, sporting a stern trimmed corporate haircut, broad straight nose, a narrow, wolfish, dangerous looking forehead, generic features. But the footage was so high quality that you could actually identify the man by the crook of his thin lips and the square angular jaw of a Doberman. He gave that cold war GRU hit squad veteran vibe.

A second man jumped out of the shotgun seat. That second man wore a closed uniform of the French Foreign Legion. A captain. No name tag.

The burly field commander opened a friendly conversation first.

- Quarter off, because you’re late, maricon.

- Would not be if you secured your roads a bit. – the driver replied with a slight russian accent without using contractions. - Got ambushed four clicks out. Possibly by your own people. Possibly to make us late to cut the price.

- Bullets are cheap. – The field commander did not like the driver’s insinuation, or rather even, almost direct accusation. His facial expression grew into something chillingly hostile with a touch of smug.

- We shot five men before the ambushers retreated.

- Men are cheap too. – The field commander grinned. – No casualties to your crew, no damage to the cargo?

- All in order, - the driver felt comfortable enough with his position to pull out a pack of Kazbek and light one up. – You get what you paid for.

The mercenaries inspecting the trucks gave the field commander okay signs one by one.

The sun high and brutally hot, it was baking oven. McInnery could feel the heat in the conference room just looking at the footage. He had a sensitive mind prone to immersion.

The camera man did do a good job, he looked everywhere he needed to, to relay the situation on the scene. Judging by his position, he was in the party with the border guards, but not among the men who were not sent to search the trucks. He was possibly of high rank, allowed to stay by the field commander and be privy to conversation. McInnery admired how good this spy was.

- Smoking kills.

- Either that or boredom. Local landscape is not much to look at.

- Si? What you say if I park the trucks for you myself and bury you monkeys here for the birds to find? That give you something to look at? – The field commander’s words woke McInnery up.

- Dig shallow, - the driver exhaled, - with this heat the birds won’t smell deep.

The field commander’s hand came down to grasp a pistol in his hip holster, though he did not draw. The truck driver didn’t flinch. His partner in the FFL uniform didn’t flinch either.

- My territory. My rules. If I say fifteen, it’s fifteen. If I say half, it’s half. – filtered the field commander. The truck driver came up to him, so close that they could reach each other with short knives if they wanted to, and looked up at him, straight in his eyes. Both men stared at each other’s reflections through their sunglasses.

- You’re looking at the man who put you in your place. Remember Kosovo? Fifty guards, three muscle cars, and your boss dead?

- You’re Maniac. – the field commander looked stunned for a moment.

Frantic pencil scribbling in dozens of notebooks around the conference table created enough noise to match the sounds of the mercenaries loading up crates. The camera man fixed the shot on each face. Field commander, Maniac, Maniac’s partner.

Guns were lowered, and the three of them took a walk. The field commander told the camera man to stay put and oversee the truck being unloaded. That was the end of relevant footage.

- Unfortunately, during their conversation at some point, they were informed of our man within their ranks. Maniac knew somehow, and they searched the barracks that evening. Our agent had to abandon mission and flee. He didn’t make it past the border, but managed to transmit this footage before he was found. – Victor commented.

This made McInnery really sad for a moment.

* * *

The second footage was from a helmet cam of the Canadian special forces conducting a raid of a lavish residence in a very nice neighborhood. A gated community.

- This is commander Tremblay with the Canadian Special Operations team! Come out peacefully, and you will be guaranteed your rights and freedoms under…

The negotiator did not finish, as the house’s glass trembled with the boom of exploding bass. Several conference members winced, and Victoria had to turn the volume down.

- This is classic Jackal. – said Lance.

Pop, pop, pop, gas grenades flew into the windows, glass shattering everywhere, as the team burst into action of dynamic entry. Bullets flew and the officers dropped one by one, gunshots coming from seemingly impossible locations. Top story, bottom story, living room windows, kitchen. It seemed like multiple suspects were hiding in the residence. A battle ensued, masked by a cacophony of maxed out audio systems which turned into what several viewers recognized as Portishead’s cover of Depeche Mode’s “In Your Room”. The jagged beat and electronic instrumentals drowned the screams and interfered with communications, because the owner of the helmet cam started yelling to get comms over the music.

A man in a hoodie flew out of the bathroom’s sunroof and made his small mistake. In a showy display of his youth, prowess, and mastery, he roundhouse kicked an incoming flash bang back at the remaining squad and flawlessly landed a twelve feet jump behind the fence. He bolted down the steps of the veranda, slid down the stair rails, and, taking two bullets to the back, ran for the police vans. Before anyone could do or think anything, the residence’s kitchen violently exploded, putting priority on helping the wounded officers.

Whoever guarded the vans could not react in time to incoming gunfire nor stop the roaring black Supra from ramming straight in between them and through the gates. So fast and so violent, it all looked peak superhuman. It was like watching something from hell.

- No way he survived that.

- He did, the car didn’t. He swapped into a second car, parked a few blocks away at a neighbor’s house. Surgical. And then, in two more miles, he was gone.

- So that’s… Kenny. Alright. Whose residence was that?

- That was a timeshare. At the time, owned by Hannelore von Kamprad. Rings a bell?

It rang a bell with everyone. Hannelore von Kamprad was a spiritual leader and personal surgeon to an Indian crime lord Deewana Ji and his pseudo-Hindu based religious cult, the Gurdwara. They traded drugs, slaves, and most importantly, nuclear warhead components, which garnered their activity more attention than slave trade did, and not for any religious reasons. Interpol had a particular hard on for plutonium leaks.

- So, let’s back up here, Hannelore operates at Swango Memorial Hospital, on a privately owned island north east of Punjab, the heart of Gurdwara Temple grounds, while maintaining a timeshare home in Canada, and we have this guy renting it out just to party at her place while Ji was scheduled for surgery in India?

- More like hiding. But why? An associate they’re covering?

- No. This is not why.

- What do you think, Vicky?

- I think it’s because the International Contract Agency, the entity we know as the ICA, never leaves the super star without backup.

- Pardon?

- There was a note recovered at the residence. A note your Kenny boy did not find. It connects all the back ends and leads to what is possibly the greatest weapons deal of the century.

There was an incredibly uncomfortable silence, the drowning heavy weight of which was internally appreciated in at least thirty different languages.

* * *

The evening was coming to an end, and many cups of coffee, tea, chai, hot cocoa, and soda were by now consumed. Ash trays were full of cigarette butts. Lunch and dinner leftovers were scattered over the spacious kitchenette. Nobody’s armpits smelled good at this point. Nobody wore a jacket; nobody’s tie was not loosened.

- So, ladies and gentlemen, let us conclude. Thanks to the excellent work of our French colleagues, we have some hope. We know approximately who Maniac is, what his level of training is, and an idea of what he looks like. We know he served in the French Foreign Legion and we know he comes from the Soviet Bloc, which means KGB or GRU or both. His footprint is rather heavy, accent recognizable, methods identifiable. What we don’t know is where he is or where he will be next.

- Right. And on the other hand, - continued Habib, taking over for McInnery, - we don’t know who Kenny is or what he looks like, but we know exactly where he’s going.

- Which, if they are indeed together (and they are) will always force them to team up, because Maniac can’t show in public, and he’ll need Kenny to do the leg work.

- And when they make a move, we’ll be waiting. This time, with one big difference. All ground and air units dispatch with orders to kill on sight. No more arrests, no more interrogations.

Prologue 3.

They flew in silence for a while. Each of them in their demented heart needed some time to process what happened in the past two hours. Each in their own way.

The young one broke the silence first.

Thanks for teaching me that vertical landing. Man, I did NOT expect that kind of performance. I heard the tale of Jay Zeamer's B-17 in 1943, but damn, taking this fat bastard into a dogfight and actually pulling through...

The An-12 was approaching the landing pattern, a cumbersome whale, lazily lining up its big belly to hit the ground. It threatened to crash, but remained afloat, until heavy chassis touched down with a thud and a rumble.

Dressed in an unbuttoned UN officer uniform, Kenny was in the co-pilot's seat, but was the one flying the aircraft now, because the man in the pilot's seat was leaning on the window and smoking, his white cotton shirt sleeves rolled up, a soot covered soviet commander watch on his right wrist. Kenny was slowly thawing out, started to become his usual explosive, talkative, abundantly verbose self.

God damn, what a ride! Hey! Seriously, that was incredible.

Maniac adjusted his shades.

- Thanks to you, partly. Was your idea to turn it into a gunboat. Those 152mmB's were a solid call, I did not think we would need them.

- A pleasure and honor to work with you, master, as always.

Maniac nodded with a hint of a smile.

- You performed adequately.

That was often as good as you could get from the old man right now.
His eyebrows narrowed a bit, signifying a continued jest to his coldness.

- You are shaping to be a good operator. - he elaborated, sounding more sincere.

They didn't have much time. Whoever sent that wing of interceptors will soon realize they aren't coming back. Without wasting air on words, they simultaneously synced their watches as the plane came to a stop.

The weather was a hospitable 100 Fahrenheit, sunny skies of Cambodia greeted them with promise of a healthy long-lasting tan. They were out of sun screen. Kenny sure felt a bit for the ones stuck in the cargo hold.

Now they had to figure out what to do with the hostages. The corpses were a lesser problem.

Raw rough draft writing starts here

Scene 1.

Gudermes, Chechnya, 2001.

"Vodka? Cm'on, it won't kill you just becoz you black!"

The Grozny-Gudermes train was three hours late and counting.

Colonel Sorvenitsin was giving everyone hell on earth.

Jules regretted signing up the first day they rode into town. He's had plenty of other gigs ready, but this one paid best for the skill set he had.

Inside the 770 tons of aluminum ingots rode 33 tons of cocaine, and it was up to Jules to ensure that the Colonel and the crew escort it safely to its destination, without blowing their asses up on a Soviet made infantry mine, getting gutted by the Romanian Viteazu or the Spetsnaz, or without simply getting fucking lost.

He had a shitty feeling about this.

"Why the fuck not. Give it." - he said to the stone faced sergeant.

Scene 2. Good guys hire counter agents. Time to pay up.

To catch a ghost you need another ghost. Someone who operates outside our boundaries, who can boil in their soup without cracking.

God, you Americans ever the dramatic. Jackal or Zorro?

Lance Sanders got caught in the middle of his self expression, choked on his poetic moment, but nodded in appreciation of being understood by a well informed counterpart.

Heh, wow. Yeah, I was thinking Jackal.

Jackal it is. Objections?

Why not both?

Alright, who wants to budget for Zorro?

A show of several hands, pens jotting down notes, cell phone keys tapping.

Okay. Both it is. Shake your contacts.

***

Remember that story about the scientists last year? The South African nuclear physicists on a prison plane that got abducted?

Well. The gist of the rumor was that they were abducted mid-air. All passengers were accounted for when they boarded. The crew didn't remember a thing. They touched down, checked the plane, the scientists were gone.

The one guy I know of whose league this would fit... Goes by the name Wratts. He's.. how do I put it? A bit eccentric.

How so?

Very selective about the jobs he takes.

Selection criteria being? Cost?

Mm. More so, difficulty. To put it simply, he won't do it unless it's bat shit crazy enough to challenge his skill.

In other words, he's a show off, a risk taker, and a big fucking liability.

Yeah. But he's also the best in his niche.

Yeah, alright.

***

Here you go running around like chimps in a zoo, looking for the next big hit while I'm making millions running planes from Kuwait to Bangladesh, jacking cargo from Gudermes to Kosovo. You're busy deducing whether I'll hit the President or bomb the Pentagon; jesus christ, fuck no! God bless the UN, God bless the United States and its president, god bless every trade embargo and permit waiver. Eagle of freedom, lift me on your wings of fucking power and carry me away. There is no McGuffin. I am perfectly content!

McInnery was smarter than that.

No, that's not you. I could see this from Maniac, but this is not you. No... You care. You do care. When home sweet home got threatened you came running like a good Canadian in a hail of steel and fury.