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

him tortured to death.

But Burton wouldn’t panic. Burton never panicked. That’s how he kept progressing. Objectively. Without emotion.

“All right, friend,” Burton said. “Who are you working for?”

The man said nothing, just motioned to the briefcase. Hand it over.

Burton laughed.

“Buddy, there are thirty passports in here.” He gave the briefcase a shake. “Globalism: the wave of the future. The twenty-first century is almost here. It’s all about bidders now, not borders.” He pointed to CG247. “This briefcase is gonna slide right in there among a few hundred pounds of famous Pensacola brick. And when the container reaches Istanbul, my buyer is transporting the passports to an undisclosed spot in the Middle East, to some of his terrorist buddies who are just dying to get it into the States.” He paused. “But I’m guessing you knew all that, since you met me here at the right crate at the right time. Who was it? Glover?”

Still no reply.

“What, then? Are you a fed?”

No reply.

Their eyes locked. Waves lapped gently a few feet away. Distant sounds of revelry.

Then movement.

A quick blur of the man’s arm. Burton flinched, body expecting to feel the burning tear of a bullet.

Instead, the man shot the briefcase.

It jolted twice in Burton’s fingers, torquing his wrist painfully, making him shuffle back a step.

The briefcase swung back and forth on its handle, squeaking like an old, rusty sign. Two clean holes perforated it, bits of paper poking out.

Burton laughed. “Well, you might have ruined a few of the passports.”

Then another flash of movement, so fast Burton didn’t even have time to lose his smug grin.

A shock of pain to his cheek, chest, thighs.

He was on the pavement. The man had closed the gap in an instant, gotten his arm around him, threw him down, and snatched the briefcase.

He held the case for only a moment.

Before he heaved it.

It tumbled through the air.

There was a splash.

Burton understood why the man had shot it. Bubble holes, something to allow water to flow through the case, keep it from floating.

He lifted his chin from the concrete, looked to the bay. The briefcase bobbed gently in the inky water. For just a second. Then with a gurgle, it bubbled out of existence, one corner lingering above the waterline for a moment, his bright future waving goodbye.

The man moved closer, aiming the suppressed Beretta at him.

Burton whipped together a plan. An instantaneous plan. He always had a plan.

Keep the guy distracted. Just for a moment.

The Maglite had rolled to a stop against his hip in the commotion. He inched his thumb toward the rubber button.

“Clearly you’re not a fed if you’re about to execute me,” Burton said. “Can you grant a dying wish and sate my curiosity? Who are you?”

The man stopped. A peculiar expression came to his hewn face.

Burton got his finger on the button. Was about to press it—

And stopped.

A wild thought came to him. An understanding, a recognition.

“Wait,” he said. “For a moment there I thought you were … It is you. Isn’t it?”

It was Pete Hudson.

The hairs on Burton’s arms stood up.

Pete Hudson…

The guy had different colored eyes—brown, not green. Contact lenses could change one’s eye color easily enough. The height was the same, as were the general proportions, even if the man was a bit more powerful, more toned. But the face was all kinds of different.

Yet it wasn’t the physicality that told Burton that this man was Hudson. It was the presence. Something beyond appearances, beyond the tactile.

Then his suspicion was confirmed.

The man nodded.

No time to waste. Instant action. Burton pressed the button and flicked the Maglite up, shining the light in Hudson’s eyes.

Hudson blinked, threw a hand over his face. And Burton swung a leg toward him, sweeping his feet from under him.

Hudson hit the pavement a few feet away. His Beretta slipped from his grasp, skittering into the darkness.

Burton hopped up. His Smith & Wesson was stashed in its holster behind his back.

But he didn’t go for it.

Not yet.

He was going to get the most out of this. Burton milked all of life’s moments for everything they were worth.

He smiled.

“Never thought I’d see you again, Pete.”

Chapter Sixty-Nine

“He’s in trouble,” Nakiri said and stabilized herself again.

The slope of the roof wouldn’t have been a problem had the metal not also been wet from the earlier rain. The warehouse was one of the taller ones in the port, almost like a miniature hanger, about twenty feet. She’d used a grappling hook to reach the top.

She was prone, on the very edge of the building with the Remington Model 700P with which she’d so callously taunted Suppressor in the snowy woods in Virginia. The rifle’s butt pressed into her shoulder, and a bipod held it steady in the front.

It was 250 yards to the shipping containers, and she’d watch all the action through her scope.

And now she saw Burton standing over Suppressor.

She’d worked this assignment for months.

She slept with that sack of shit, the man on whom her crosshairs rested. So many freaking times.

She could eliminate him right now.

She had the shot.

This was so goddamn stupid.

Especially since Suppressor was compromised.

“I said, he’s in trouble!” she shouted to her cellular phone, sitting a couple inches from her elbow, when Falcon didn’t respond. “Burton has the upper hand. I have the shot. He’s standing over Suppressor, motionless, like a big, freakin’ bullseye.”

“Hold,” Falcon said. “Suppressor has completed the primary objective. If he can’t complete the secondary, if Burton eliminates him first, then you put a bullet through Burton’s skull. Until then, you do nothing but observe. Is that clear?”

“Suppressor’s compromised, damn you!” she said. “He’s lost his Beretta, and Burton’s armed. He never goes anywhere without his Smith.”

“I said hold, Nakiri.”

She exhaled.

And her trigger finger trembled.

Chapter Seventy

Tanner put his badge away, and the guard retreated into his shack and pressed a button. The red-and-white-striped boom gate arm in front of the Lincoln slowly raised. Tanner eased the car into the Port of Pensacola.

“Heck of a hunch you got here, Lieutenant,” Pace