Dead Six

the gun. Lorenzo had given me a dirty look when I pulled it out. I just smiled at him in return.

Lorenzo addressed his associate. “Reaper, this is—”

“I know who he is,” the kid interrupted. “Is he for real?”

“He’s for real,” Lorenzo replied.

Reaper, I guess his name was, stared at me. “Dude, what’s wrong with your eyes? They’re like totally different colors. That’s fucked up.”

Lorenzo ignored him. “Let’s get started. How are we gonna do this?”

“I’m still on board with the ‘go in and kill everybody’ plan,” I said. “Or did you get enough information to make a better plan than that?”

“No.” Lorenzo frowned. “We need to find Jill first. We still need more information. Their meet will be a turkey shoot. I called somebody earlier who might know. He’s working on it now.” Reaper raised an eyebrow, but Lorenzo didn’t elaborate about his mysterious phone call.

“I don’t think we have a lot of time,” I said. “We don’t know what we don’t know. We’ll just have to go in and play it by ear.”

“Not really my style,” Lorenzo said.

“Mine, either,” I confessed. “But nobody ever tells me what the hell is going on, so I just roll with it. You guys got weapons?” If they didn’t, Hawk sure had a basement full of them.

“Hells yeah, we got weapons!” Reaper said. He picked up the hockey bag and dumped it out onto a table. Lorenzo rolled his eyes as weapons, magazines, radios, body armor, and night-vision equipment came clattering out of the bag, landing in a heap on the table.

So this was the crack team that had managed to track down Dead Six and infiltrate our compound. I shook my head and went back to my cleaning.

Reaper handed a carbine to Lorenzo, who proceeded to check it. Some kind of short, select-fire AR-15, with a twelve-inch barrel and a suppressor. Reaper pulled from the bag a Glock 17. He inserted a magazine, chambered a round, then stuck the pistol in a shoulder holster under his trench coat. On his belt he had more magazines. He then picked up what I assumed was his primary weapon.

“Benelli M1,” Reaper said proudly as he started stuffing 12-gauge shells into every available pocket. “Semi- auto, short barrel, badass all the way.”

“That’s actually a Benelli M2,” I corrected. Reaper frowned. I wondered how well Reaper could use his shotgun, though. He looked like an extra from The Matrix. Reassembling my rifle, I watched the two of them get suited up. I could tell they’d been working together since . . . well, probably since that kid graduated from high school, which couldn’t have been all that long ago. Still, for old friends, they didn’t talk much. It might’ve been because of my presence, but then, professional thieves probably have some weird interpersonal dynamics going on.

Like I’ve got any room to talk, right?

Hawk came home while we were still playing dress up. He scowled first at the strangeness that was Reaper, then at me, then finally gave Lorenzo a silent nod. “Been a long time.”

“Hawk,” Lorenzo responded uncomfortably.

The two stayed, exchanging a look that I couldn’t decipher. There was a lot of history there, and I couldn’t tell if they were friends or enemies or maybe somehow both. Finally, Hawk spoke. “No sign of the girl. No one in town knows anything.”

“I guess we keep waiting,” I said.

Lorenzo reached into his pocket as his phone vibrated. “Yeah?” He listened for at least a minute straight. “Okay, I got it. Thanks. I’ll be in touch.”

Hanging up the phone, he looked at me.

“What’s the word?” I asked, fiddling with my thigh holster like a woman adjusting a stocking.

“Our next stop is a closed rest stop down the highway. Out past it is an abandoned prison work camp. That’s where they’re holding her.”

“You’re sure of this? Can your friend be trusted?”

“Oh, I’m sure. He’s like a brother to me.”

LORENZO

The four of us were still in Hawk’s house, readying equipment. We would be leaving in a few minutes. At one point I caught Hawk studying me. He motioned for me to step aside to speak. I stopped loading magazines long enough to follow. He had aged a lot since I had seen him last. I knew Hawk was at least a decade older than I was, and there had apparently been some hard years in there. His hair was grayer, his face lined and creased by the sun and wind of several continents, and he’d picked up a limp at some point.

When we were out of earshot, Hawk began to speak. “You know, I thought you were dead. Everybody from the old crew thought for sure those Cubans had got you in Sweothi City.”

“It was better that way,” I answered. “Some of us didn’t part on the best of terms. I figured it would be easier for everybody if Decker assumed I was dead.”

Hawk nodded sagely. “That was probably smart. Adrian wasn’t the kind of man that I’d want holding a grudge against me, so I suppose it was for the best. Well, I was glad to hear from you. I always hated losing men. I just wished you would have called sooner, because that’s one less thing I would have had gnawing at me, Ozzie.”

It had been a long time since I had gone by that name, just one of many in a long line of aliases. “I go by Lorenzo now.”

“That’s what Jill told me. That girl wouldn’t shut up about you. She’s got quite the fondness for you. She talked a lot, but I’ll admit, it was nice having a young lady around. You’ve changed more than your name, Lorenzo. You’re a different man than you were back in Africa.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked slowly.

“The man I knew back then was a stone-cold killer who only thought about himself and back-stabbed anybody who got in his way, unless you just happened to somehow become one of his friends, and he didn’t have hardly any of those. A man so twisted up inside and scary driven that it even got to worrying somebody like Decker. Why do I think you changed? Because for a woman that good to take a liking to you, you’re either a better man than I remember, or you’re a whole lot better con.” The old mercenary gave me the smallest bit of a grin. “And Val might not think so yet, but you did the right thing helping him. That boy’s like a son to me. Don’t you tell him I said that.”

“You don’t have to come with us, Hawk.”

He was solemn. “True. I don’t. I’m retired. I’ve got a nice place, just how I like it. Comfortable, I suppose. But you know, I think I took a liking to that girl too. Hell, Val and that little lady damn near killed each other in my kitchen when he first got here. Had to separate ’em like a couple of squawkin’ kids.” Hawk let out a raspy laugh. “He’s sure got a soft spot for the females. And they’re about the same age. They got along after a while. Gave her someone else to blab about you to. I was getting tired of it.”

I laughed along with him. We’d overthrown a country together once. Hawk was the last of the gunslingers, and there was nobody alive I’d rather have at our side.

Valentine appeared in the doorway. “It’s time.” He was dropping rounds into his revolver and snapped the cylinder closed. Well, maybe Hawk wasn’t the last of the gunslingers.

VALENTINE

It was a long drive out of Quagmire to the rest stop, following a lonely two-lane highway with sparse traffic. We were far away from the nearest interstate, and there wasn’t much going on out here. The rest stop itself was closed, but you could still pull off into the parking lot. Sitting in that parking lot was a nondescript black Suburban. I