“Then why are they in the trenches, shooting people, planning another Hiroshima?”
“Because they’re also people of action. They balance brain and brawn. Wars are won through strategy and tactics driving a physical force. That desire for action suits the other service they occasionally provide to powerful people, the elimination of opposition, embarrassments, trouble. They’re highly efficient black operatives, killers. Best in the world, best in history.”
“They didn’t seem that way last night.” A ribbon of smoke from the old men’s sheesha drifted between Jagger and Owen, rippling and coiling like a snake.
“You mean the way they blasted in there?” He made a face. “Stealth is for James Bond movies. They do that too, but not every operation fits that approach. They used what worked for Genghis Khan, called the Chen — shock and thunder. The Germans called it blitzkrieg, lightning war. Fast, loud, powerful. It takes their enemies off guard, forces them to act impulsively instead of prudently. As far as I can tell, it worked.”
Jagger remembered the woman taking something from Tyler’s hand. “If their objectives were to kill Creed and get back what he stole, then I guess it did.”
Owen lowered his boot and leaned forward. “You know they got the microchip?”
“The woman said Tyler took something of theirs. After she…” He couldn’t bring himself to even say it, the images it conjured. “Later, she took something from his hand.”
Owen frowned, stood up, and carried his mug to the counter.
They shot my son, Jagger forced himself to think, handing the blame now to this mysterious group Owen described rather than merely to the woman. He recalled the crack of the gun that changed everything, starting with the way Tyler’s face instantly went from joy to stunned pain.
Owen came back, blowing steam off the surface of his coffee. He sat and took a sip.
“I saw a tattoo,” Jagger said, “right here.” He touched the inside of his prosthetic forearm.
Owen nodded. “They all have it. Liquid gold ink, impossible to remove. As far as they’re concerned, you really can’t leave the Tribe, even if you’re not physically with it anymore.”
“They got you forever,” Jagger said. “Sounds like a cult to me.” He couldn’t get the idea out of his head.
“Think of it as a birthmark.”
“So, what… these people, the Tribe, they’re just a bunch of brainy killers for hire?”
“It’s not about money. They have plenty of wealth, accumulated over the years. They’d rather rack up favors; reciprocity from the right people is invaluable. I said they occasionally provide black op favors for powerful people. Typically, they’re doing it on their own. When they do it for others, regardless of the other person’s motive, the target has to meet their criterion.”
“Which is?”
Owen squinted at him and tilted his head, as though Jagger should already have known. He said, “They have to be bad guys.”
[58]
“Bad guys?” Jagger said, waving his hand through the smoke hovering over the table between them. “What does that mean?”
“People who’ve committed crimes and for one reason or another have escaped justice,” Owen said. “For the most part, murderers, rapists, child molesters, but also kidnappers, white collar criminals, men who’ve severely and repeatedly battered their wives or children and just haven’t killed them yet.”
“They’re vigilantes?” Jagger said.
“That puts a different spin on things, doesn’t it?”
Jagger shook his head. “No.”
“But you understand the feeling, wanting to take the law into your own hands? Especially when the system breaks down and bad guys get away.”
“What are you getting at?”
“They’ve killed people who’ve used vehicles to murder innocents. Habitual drunk drivers.”
Jagger reached across the table and grabbed Owen’s wrist. “You’ve investigated me?”
“I did a little research.”
“Why?”
“I’m getting to that,” Owen said. “Right now I just want to know how you feel about vigilantes.”
Jagger released Owen’s wrist, leaned back. “Of course I understand vengeance. Who doesn’t? Yes, I wish that drunk was dead, and there’s a part of me that’s angry with myself for not doing something about it. Maybe if it weren’t for my family, I would.”
“A lot of people think that way,” Owen said. “Something stops them from acting. Their family, going to jail, lack of the knowledge of how to do it or lack of courage, their belief that God will sort it out. Nothing wrong with any of that.” He picked up his mug and seemed to speak into it. “Do you want to kill the woman who shot your son?”
Jagger’s jaw stiffened, his teeth ground together, sounding like ropes pulling tight. He closed his eyes and said, “Yes. But I would settle for her being caught, going to trial, spending the rest of her life in jail.”
“Justice.”
“Yes.” He opened his eyes. “I said I understood vengeance, but I don’t understand what this… this tribe is doing.”
“They’re filling the gap between what victims or the families of victims want to do and what they can do.”
“I get that,” Jagger said. “But who are they targeting? Just random criminals?”
“Sinners,” Owen said. He set down the mug and pushed it away. “They target sinners.”
“ Sinners? In the religious sense?”
Owen smiled. “I don’t know any other sense. A criminal breaks man’s laws. Sinners break divine law. The Tribe doesn’t have much regard for man’s laws, except where they match God’s, and that helps them find targets, because criminals, not sinners, make the news. They’re much more interested in right and wrong as God defines the terms, and then meting out justice to those who escape it. That’s the reason they exist, as far as they’re concerned.”
Jagger had called them vigilantes, but that wasn’t quite it. The religious aspect added something: “Vigilantes for God.”
“So they think.”
“On a divine mission from God.”
“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” Owen said, “but you can put it that way.”
“I suppose their dog told them to kill for God?” Jagger grabbed his mug and took a big swig. The brew was lukewarm and even more bitter than before.
“Don’t think about their motivations, just what they’re doing: killing bad guys.”
“Then they should kill themselves, what they did to Tyler. He wasn’t their target. He’s innocent.”
“You said Tyler took the chip?”
“That’s what the woman said.”
“Then he wasn’t innocent, not in their eyes. He got in their way. That made him guilty.”
We were going to leave you alone, Phin had said. But you got in our way-you and the kid-and that gives us permission. Not just that, an obligation.
“That’s twisted logic,” Jagger said. “It makes almost anybody fair game for them.”
Owen nodded, a slow bobbing of his head. “That’s why I’ve been after them for years. Not constantly, they’re much too cunning, too covert. By the time I get to the scene of one of their killings, they’re long gone.”
“That’s how you know so much about them, by going after them when you can, trying to stop them?”
Owen smiled. “I would like nothing more than to call fire down from heaven to destroy them.”
The old man from the counter sauntered over with a carafe. He topped off Jagger’s mug and refilled Owen’s.
“I’m going to be wired,” Owen said, watching the man depart. Without lifting it, he wrapped his hands around
