Allegiance Burned: A Jackson Quick Adventure Read online

  When I ratted out their conspiracy of bribery, fraud, and murder to the media, they ended up in prison and I had a target on my back. In the last eighteen months, they’d tried four times to kill me: the Florida Keys, Santa Fe, Toronto, and now San Antonio.

  Every time, I’m waiting for them. Every time, I get better at protecting myself and escaping to the next hiding place. I never get back my rental deposit.

  They usually attack in two teams of two, however. This time there was only one team. They had no backup. That doesn’t fit with their typical method of operation.

  It doesn’t fit.

  The woman sitting near the door has her back against the window. Her angular profile gives her an athletic appearance. Her black hair is pulled back into a short ponytail underneath a Spurs baseball cap. She’s cradling a large backpack on her lap that covers her chest. She’s looking toward the driver, who glances at her before his eyes flit to the rearview mirror and me. The woman, whose body is turned toward the aisle of the bus, hasn’t glanced at me once. Her focus is on the driver.

  Something’s not right.

  “Good morning.” I nod to the woman, trying to get her attention. “It’s early to be up isn’t it?”

  She looks at the driver before shifting to me. “I’m sorry?” Her eyes narrow and her right hand slips behind the backpack.

  “It’s early,” I repeat with a toothy grin. I don’t have time to get the Tec 9 from my bag. The revolver will have to suffice. I’ve got six shots. I carefully slip the weapon from my waist and hold it against the seat with my left hand. It’s ready to fire.

  “I suppose,” she says, her eyes still betraying some confusion.

  “What do you do?” I ask. The driver takes a longer look at me in the mirror.

  “What do you mean?” The woman shifts again. Her jaw tenses.

  “For a living,” I say. “You know, what’s your vocation?” With my right hand I grab one of my bag’s shoulder straps and grip it tightly, shifting it onto my right leg.

  “I’m a consultant,” she says, nods almost imperceptibly at the driver, and reaches for the chrome pole that separates her seat from the entrance steps. “Now!”

  The bus decelerates quickly, sucking me from my seat into the seat back in front of me on onto the floor. I’m stuck, but I still have control of the Governor. The bag falls on top of me.

  Thump! Thump!

  Two large holes spit through the innards of the seat back inches from my head.

  Thump! Another shot rips the seat and grazes my right arm.

  I let go of my rucksack and kick it out into the aisle, scrambling onto my back so I can see underneath the seat. There are a pair of black boots angled toward me near the entrance steps. She hasn’t left her seat yet!

  I extend my left arm under the seat and aim for the boots. I pull the trigger.

  The sound of the shot shell expanding into the cabin is quickly followed by a loud scream.

  “I’m hit!” she yells, firing again. “My ankle!”

  Thump! Thump! Thump! She returns fire but the pain is affecting her aim. The shots whistle past the top of the seats and crack into a window a few rows behind me.

  The bus lurches forward into gear, so I roll onto my side and switch my aim toward the driver. Two pulls of the trigger elicit expletives and a groan. The bus accelerates and then slows again quickly, causing the woman to fall from her braced position in the front.

  Her hat falls off and she hits the ground face first. I can’t see her face, but she’s dropped her semi-automatic, which tumbles down the aisle out of her reach. She looks up and meets my eyes right as I pull the trigger. She doesn’t scream this time.

  The bus is starting and stopping like the driver is experimenting with a manual transmission and can’t work the clutch. He must be hurt. He’s moaning and talking incoherently. I roll onto my back and manage to pull myself up, peeking around the side of the seat into the aisle.

  The woman is dead or dying, her blood creeping toward the 9mm. Her left hand is twitching. She’s not a threat.

  I pull myself into the aisle and, crouched low, inch forward toward the driver and pick up the gun with my right hand. It’s warm from the six shots she fired, and from her blood, which is sticky on the barrel. I slip the Governor back into my waistband. The bus rolls to a slow stop.

  “Who sent you?” I call to the driver, moving to the seat behind him, the 9mm aimed at the back left of his head.

  He moans and shakes his head, his chin dropping to his chest. He’s in bad shape. The lower back of his seat is riddled. The shot shell pellets probably punctured his lungs. I can hear a wheeze rattle from his open mouth. Somehow he managed to slam the bus into park.

  “Who sent you?” I press.

  “I...” the driver starts. But he can’t finish. “I....” He sighs and spits his final breath.

  I inch around to his side and see the problem. He’s got a large entry hole underneath the shirt pocket on his left side. It’s about the size of a 9mm.

  His partner killed him.

  We’re stopped at an angle against a curb, blocking the left lane of traffic. It’s 4:48 AM and still dark. There’s no crowd gathered outside yet. I tuck the 9mm next to the revolver and use the seat backs to hop over the dead woman in the aisle. The blood pooling around her hasn’t reached my backpack thankfully. I grab the pack and sling it on. It feels heavier.

  Hopping back over the woman, I almost slip and fall back onto her, but regain my balance and pull the lever to open the bus door. I carefully step off of the bus onto the grass lining the curb. I’m not sure where I am. Nothing looks familiar. I turn left and start walking quickly away from the bus, like one of those scenes from an action movie. I don’t turn around, half expecting the bus to explode behind me for effect.

  I’ve marched maybe a block when a black sedan pulls up alongside me and slows to my pace. Instinctively, the revolver finds its way into my hand. I raise it as I turn to face the window lowering from the rear passenger door.

  “Get in the car, good man,” says the familiar voice in the back seat. “You’re liable to catch your death out there.”

  CHAPTER 2

  “How did you find me?”

  It’s 4:54 AM, and my body sinks into the wide leather seat with the exhaustion of a full day.

  “I’ve told you before, Jackson Quick, I can find you whenever it suits me,” the man laughs and sips from a white china cup. The cup is dwarfed in his thick, swollen hands. “And this morning,” he continues. “It suited me.”

  “Yeah.” I rest my arm on the rucksack next to me. I’m facing backward in the limousine, my back against the partition separating us from the driver. “I find the timing a little coincidental for my liking.”

  “Trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ,” he smirks.

  “Shakespeare?” I say more than ask. “A little trite, even for you, isn’t it?”

  “Perhaps.” He leans forward to rest the cup on a saucer. “But you know, Jackson, I am not much for coincidence. I much prefer the idea of divine intervention.”

  “God complex much?” I reach for the bottled water in the cup holder to my left. The cap twists easily and I pull a swig into my mouth.

  “Your wit is only outdone by your arrogance,” he says. His hands are resting on his knees. He’s in a well-tailored dark blue suit with a yellow ascot. “I’m truly shocked you’ve lasted this long.”

  He’s right. It’s a miracle I’ve survived as long as I have. I should be dead.

  I screw the cap back onto the bottle. “So what do you want?”

  “Cut to the chase,” he laughs. “That’s what I love about you.”

  His eyes meet mine. I don’t blink. He senses I’m not saying anything else until he tells me why I am in his car.

  “I have a job for you.”

  So there it is. Sir Spencer Thomas has a job for me.

  The last time he saw me, we were in a bar in Austin
. He offered me a beer after trying to persuade me into joining him in his never-ending battle to fight for either the righteous or the highest bidder. It was one or the other. I can’t remember.

  I do remember his self-proclaimed Robin Hood once held me captive, tortured me, let me go, and then saved my life. He lied to me and then offered to protect me. He worked for the man who used to be my boss and who now wants me dead.

  We have a complicated relationship.

  “I told you months ago, Jackson,” he reminds me, “you cannot protect yourself from the reach of your enemies. I have the ability and inclination to keep you safe. That is, if you listen to my proposition and take me up on the offer.”

  “I’m doing fine on my own,” I lie.

  “So it seems.” His eyes glance at the bloodstain on my right arm.

  “Why me?” I ask, self-consciously rubbing the nick on my arm. “I’m no Special Forces guy. I don’t have any covert training. I’m a regular guy trying to survive.”

  “Men like you,” he nods, “the ones trying to survive? They’re the most effective, I’ve found at getting the job done.” His lips curl into a smile. “It’s not business for you, Jackson. It’s, as you said, survival, and survival is perhaps the strongest of all motivators.”

  I swallow past the dryness in my throat and gulp down some water. He’s right. Eventually, my former boss will win. His goons will kill me. Until then, I’m not really living anyhow. From one cheap hiding hole to another, I keep looking for peace. I can’t find it.

  Sir Spencer does have resources. He has money and powerful friends. He’s connected to the good and the bad. If there’s a man who lives in shades of gray, it’s Sir Spencer. I do believe him when he tells me he can keep me alive. Plus, there aren’t a lot of options. It’s not as though there were limos lining the curb to pick me up.

  “If I do this,” I say, “and I mean if I do this...”

  “Yes?” His eyes widen. He knows I’m ensnared.

  “Can you help me disappear permanently?” I need to get off the hamster wheel. I want normalcy.

  “Of course.” He leans forward and extends his meathook of a hand. “Jackson, my good man, I can make you disappear.”

  ***

  “Still flying the Embraer Legacy?” I ask Sir Spencer, stepping onto the asphalt runway, inhaling the sting of jet fuel, and climbing the fold-down steps onto his ice white jet.

  “Oh yes,” he laughs from behind me. “It’s too convenient a toy with which to part.”

  “Hello again, sir,” curls the drawl of a thin blonde in a tight blue skirt at the top of the steps. Her hair, as it was the last time I flew with Sir Spencer, is pulled against her head in a loose bun. Her lipstick is more subtle than I remember. Her blouse is not.

  “Sally Anne, is it?” I smile and slide past her close enough to replace the jet fuel tang with her perfume and step into the familiar cabin.

  To the left is a wet bar with a refrigerator, a wine cooler, and a microwave. Farther left is the lavatory and the cockpit, its dual controls lit with green and red. To the right is a cabin awash in ivory leather and walnut trim.

  Along the right side of the aircraft, stretching most of its length, is a long sofa. To the left are four pairs of captain’s chairs. Two face forward and two face the rear of the aircraft. There are walnut tables between them. At the rear of the jet is a pair of recliners.

  My mind flashes to my last flight on this plane. A brief trip from west Texas to Austin, during which the Governor of Texas admitted to me he’d used me in a complex scheme.

  He’d struck a deal with a handful of energy companies to prevent his political rival from using new technology to enhance the efficiency of fossil fuels. Money changed hands; people died.

  “We are warriors, Jackson,” he’d spun his warped rationale. “It’s a battle between what’s right for Texans and what’s not. We’re on the side of good here. Our economy feeds off the energy industry. We survived the recession in ’09 because of oil and gas production. President Obama said it, ‘We’re the Saudi Arabia of natural gas!’ We can’t let anything affect that.”

  “He meant the United States as a whole,” I told him. “I don’t think he was talking specifically about Texas.”

  “Get your head out of the sand, boy,” the Governor sneered. “Texas is the United States if you’re talking energy of any kind. Hell, we’re ahead of the Socialist Republic of California when it comes to wind energy production. Wind for goodness sake. Our economy, the nation’s economy, would be impotent without what the energy folks do for us. Those so-called ‘environmentalists’ are traitors as far as I’m concerned. You can’t have it both ways.”

  Now he’s in jail and I’m living life in a prison.

  “Music, Jackson?” Sir Spencer gripped his thick hand on my shoulder and shuffled past me to his recliner. “Anything you prefer?”

  “Linkin Park?” I request, knowing he’s unlikely to have it in his iPod playlist.

  “Ha!” he snorts as his heft sinks into the leather chair. He pats the seat next to him. “Have a seat, good man. Have a seat.”

  He pulls a remote from the table next to his seat and thumbs through his options. I drop my pack on the floor and sit in the recliner next to him.

  “Hmmm,” Sir Spencer squints and presses his selection. “What about this?”

  The strains of a violin fill the cabin.

  “This isn’t Linkin Park.”

  “Clearly,” he says, his eyes closed. “This is Marin Marias.”

  “Violin?”

  “Violin and harpsichord.” He gently waves his right hand in the air, his fingers dancing. “Beautiful isn’t it?”

  “Eh.”

  “Please, good man,” he opens his eyes and narrows his brow. “This is genius. Before Marin people didn’t see the harpsichord as an instrument worthy of anything other than solo performance. He looked beyond the obvious.”

  “And?” I don’t share his love for classical music or harpsichords.

  “And this is so ahead of its time. It’s called music for the Sun King.”

  “I’d still prefer A Thousand Suns.”

  “Linkin Park?” he asks, his hand still keeping rhythm.

  I nod as the music stops, interrupted by the pilot.

  “Welcome aboard,” his voice crackles through the speakers. “We’ll be leaving Stinson Municipal Airport here in a minute. We’ll taxi onto runway twenty-seven and make our way under partly cloudy skies to Ellington Field in Houston. The temperature there is a muggy eighty-five degrees with a slight chance of rain. The trip is a quick one hundred and seventy-three nautical miles. It should take us a little less than forty-five minutes in the air.”

  “Houston?” I don’t want to step into the lion’s den. “Why Houston?”

  “We have a meeting there.” Sir Spencer hands are resting on his knees. The music begins again and he smiles, exhaling lightly. “At Nanergetix Corporation.”

  ***

  Nanergetix’s world headquarters is a tall, blue, reflective glass building in part of what used to be Enron’s campus on the southwestern edge of downtown Houston. The company was founded and run by Don Carlos Buell. He wanted to be governor. He wanted to change energy. He wanted a lot of things before an assassin, hired by my then boss, put a bullet in his head in front of a live television audience.

  “Why are we here?” I follow Sir Spencer through the revolving door and into the building’s lobby. “You told me on the plane I’d find out when we got here.”

  “All in good time, good man,” he says without turning around. “All in good time.”

  I can’t stand this self-righteous knight. His condescension and double-talk make me want to puke. Or shoot him. Or shoot him after I puke. He’s my ticket to normalcy, though. He can make me disappear. So I’ll tolerate it.

  “Excuse me.” He bellies up to the reception desk. “Excuse me there, sir.”

  A uniformed security guard looks up from a bank of flat screen m
onitors and raises his eyebrows. He doesn’t say anything.

  Sir Spencer shrugs. “Well, that’s not the kind of southern hospitality I would have expected.”

  “Can I help you?” The security guard frowns. He’s unimpressed by the well-dressed Brit with the receding hairline and expensive veneer smile.

  “Much better,” says Sir Spencer. “And yes, good man, you may help us. We’re here to see Bella Francesca.”

  “Are you now?” The guard sounds dubious. “And you would be?”

  “Sir Spencer Thomas and guest.”

  “Is she expecting you?” The guard pulls a thin red three-ring binder from a drawer and opens it. He runs his finger down what appears to be a list of expected visitors.

  “Yes,” Sir Spencer winks. “She is.”

  The guard’s finger stops and runs along a line of text. He looks up again at Sir Spencer and glances at me.

  “You the guest?” he asks with a chin nod.

  “Yes,” Sir Spencer intercedes. “That’s Chester Bennington. His name should be there too.” I try not to chuckle.

  The guard looks down at the list and then picks up a phone in front of him while scribbling something in the binder.

  “This is Fitzgerald in security,” he grunts into the phone. “I have a Mr. Thomas and a Mr. Bennington in the lobby. Can I send them up?” He pauses. “Okay then.” He hangs up.

  “You can go ahead,” he says, suspicion leaking from his stare. “The elevators are to your left. Take one to the sixtieth floor. There will be someone to greet you when you get there.”

  “Thank you so much, Mr. Fitzgerald.” Sir Spencer pats the desk and then herds me toward the elevators. When we’re out of the security guard’s earshot, I grab Sir Spencer’s arm.

  “Chester Bennington?” I tug him to a stop. “Really?”

  He smirks. “Well we couldn’t use your real name. You’re a wanted man and one can never be too careful.”

  “Yeah,” I acknowledge. “But Chester Bennington is the lead singer of Linkin Park.”

  “As though the good Mr. Fitzgerald would have known,” Sir Spencer winks, pulls himself from my grip, and strides toward an open elevator.