The Suppressor by Erik Carter (best free novels .txt) 📗

Silence was already more than familiar with the popular weapon. Like Cobb’s Glock 19 that Silence carried during his killing spree, this was a weapon trusted around the world by police and military forces. If he hadn’t already learned all about the weapon during his police training, Nakiri had relentlessly pounded the information into his brain in recent weeks.

It was matte black, ideal for the work he’d be doing. The weight of it was pleasing. So was the shape of it, the feel.

He put it back in the holster.

Falcon blew smoke from the corner of his mouth and checked his watch.

“Dammit, where is she?” He took another drag. Sighed. “You made it through training. Do you feel ready?”

Before Silence could reply, the door behind him flew open, and there was the tap of heels rapidly crossing the ruined floor. Nakiri came to the table, threw down the peacoat she’d had hooked in her arm, then tore off her oversized sunglasses, revealing a shiner on her left eye. Purple and yellow and glistening. She pointed at it as she stepped within a couple feet of Falcon.

“Oh, yes, he’s ready.”

Falcon turned to Silence and grinned. “I’m glad you’re learning to do what’s necessary. True indiscrimination.”

Nakiri went to the other end of the table. She wore jeans and a long-sleeve, V-neck top. After the now customary cleaning of the seat, she flopped down into the chair. Dust ballooned up, twinkling in the sunlight coming in through the window.

She looked across the table at Silence with a slightly softened version of her standard severity. He’d passed a test, and now he was a contemporary of hers, but she still needed him to know he was a piece of shit.

Falcon looked back-and-forth between them, that little grin of his disappearing. Silence had noticed how this attitude of Falcon’s could quickly shift into professionalism. Whoever this guy was in the real world, he’d made a clear delineation between civility and playfulness, no matter how goofy the guy could appear.

“Burton had Clayton Glover finish off every last piece of the Farone family,” Falcon said. He paused to look at Silence, his expression changing again, this time to something like hesitance, almost pity. “Including Joseph Farone. I know the old man took a shining to you. Sorry to have to report this, Suppressor.”

Silence nodded.

A twinge in Silence’s gut, another taste of loss in a period of time when he’d lost so much. But it was slight. And it disappeared as quickly as it had materialized.

He remembered what Burton had told him in the hallway of the Farone mansion, the night he murdered C.C. Burton said two things were going to happen, the second of which would occur down the line and be a chance for him to reconnect with his “Daddy.”

Burton had followed through. He’d reconnected with Daddy. Murdered him.

After everything Silence had gone through recently, after all Burton had taken from him, he was surprisingly blank. He wondered if it would always be like this, if he’d been permanently numbed.

Falcon watched him, eyes squinting slightly as though processing a thought before he said it. “You’ve been trained. You’ve healed. Now it’s time for your assignment. As badly as you want to get your revenge on Burton, you know he’s involved in some bigger shit as well. And you need to know more about him.”

Nakiri leaned in Silence’s direction and almost put her forearms on the dusty table before thinking better of it. She crossed them over her chest instead.

“That’s right. You don’t think I hung on that piece of shit’s arm for months and didn’t get any intel, did you, dummy? Burton wanted us all to think he’d been an orphan from unknown parents, handpicked and groomed by Joey ‘the Jaguar’ Farone. Most of that’s true. All except the parenting part.

“His biological father was Jacques Sollier, an international terrorist, active in the mid ’60s through the ’70s. No one knows whether he was French, French-Canadian, French-Algerian—the guy was a ghost. Bombings in Poland. Assassinations in East Germany and the Balkans. A real opportunist: no-affiliation, highest-bidder-gets-the-job sort of stuff. Moved around Europe with near impunity.” A piece of ceiling tile dropped to her lap. She scowled and brushed it away. “Sollier’s specialty was utilizing shipping ports—transporting weapons and explosives and hostages and himself. Evidently he died doing what he loved—they found him with a few holes in his chest behind a utility shed at the Freeport of Riga. Neither the Latvians nor Interpol ever found who did it. My guess is they didn’t try too hard.”

Falcon squashed out his cigarette on the sole of his brogues and flicked the butt into the pile of broken cinderblocks in the corner.

“Sollier fathered a child on one of his trips to the States,” he said. “Abandoned the kid and the mother, one Carolyn Burton. Momma got herself murdered a few years later. Kid goes into foster care. And you know the rest.

“Now … let’s talk about the present. Nakiri blew her cover with Burton.” He pointed toward her, and though he didn’t look at her, she still averted her eyes. “So we’ve been monitoring him from a distance while we pieced you back together. The guy’s a pro. He’s meticulous about privacy, security. All we’ve been able to glean is a numerical code: CG247.

“But his lieutenant is a whole lot sloppier. Clayton Glover might be moving up in the world, but he’s still a scumbag. Every other Friday, like clockwork, he goes out to a crappy part of Pensacola, where a suited man ‘escorts’ a lady to his Lexus.”

There was that mischievous twinkle in Falcon’s eyes again. He looked at Silence.

“We’re getting you back to Florida. Two weeks from today, we know where you can find Glover. Until then, we’ll move you into your new house, and you’re to proceed with the assignment. Understood?”

Silence nodded.

Nakiri bounced in her chair. “Oh, yippee! Dummy’s about to be sent off on his very first assignment. My heart overflows.” She wiped away