The Infiltrators Read online

  Righty’s quizzical expression urged him to continue.

  “You are right. I do need you for something. And you need me even more, even though you don’t know it. You need me for survival. I need you for revenge.”

  “Survival?”

  “Your entire country is being subjected to high-intensity covert warfare for the purpose of exploitation and possibly outright invasion. It is being carried out by the organization I was once the head of. They export the Smokeless Green here for the purpose of money and to wreak havoc inside your country. Selegania is being used as the base from which other countries are supplied, making it look like Selegania is the ultimate source. Selegania will eventually become a pariah nation. Within Selegania, powerful men such as yourself are being allowed to rise but only for the purpose of one of them eventually being chosen as the national monster, against whom all police and military resources will be directed without mercy.

  “I’ve closely watched your rival kingpin in Selegania, and he is without a doubt being supplied directly by my former colleagues, though he doesn’t know anything about them. Every other kingpin amongst Dachwald, Sodorf, and Selegania is either being supplied by your rival, directly by my former colleagues, or by yourself.

  “You’re the only one who has managed to become fully independent, due to this ranch. My former colleagues may not yet be aware how you have managed to achieve such high status without being supplied directly by them, but I can assure you that the price of your success is that you are going to be the man they ultimately turn into the national monster.

  “But even these things are only preliminary to larger ambitions.”

  “So, there’s a highly sophisticated organization in a foreign country behind the arrival of Smokeless Green, and they’re using it to finance themselves, create disorder, and eventually do something bigger.”

  “You’ve understood well enough.”

  “So, what are you offering me, and just what in the hell do you have to gain by going against your former comrades?”

  Chapter 9

  It had been an okay night on the streets, but Zelven knew something was awry. The first night he had sold Smokeless Green at half the going rate, he had run out after just a few hours and had to go resupply and come back.

  Here it was after midnight, and he had only sold half his stash. He considered the possibility other dealers had lowered their prices to compete, but his men had snooped about, and no one could sell at his rates without taking a stinging loss. No, something else was afoot.

  He had already sniffed out the problem with sufficient certainty to formulate a plan of action, but when his thoughts were suddenly interrupted by an approaching buyer, he thought of a new plan.

  Though pretending to be calm, the buyer betrayed to the hawk-like eyes of Zelven that he was glancing around a bit too much to just be checking for police.

  “What will you have, my good man?” asked Zelven cheerily.

  “A-an ounce, man. That is—well, you know, if the discount’s still good tonight, man.”

  “Oh, it is indeed. But I tell you what, how would you like to have two ounces if—”

  “TWO?!” the haggard man said with childlike enthusiasm.

  Zelven had a nasty temper when interrupted, but he could conquer it when the prize was sufficient.

  “Yes, my friend. Two. Exactly two.”

  “Ha . . . haha,” the man said nervously, running both of his hands through his hair like combs, considering the proposed trade-off. “Well, how much you want fer it?”

  “Oh, it isn’t money, friend. It’s something far easier, just a little information.”

  The man’s eyes grew wide, and he looked around furtively, as if he were a bandit who had already spent five minutes in the bank vault and expected the sheriff and an army of deputies to arrive any second. He looked up at Zelven with shiny, mischievous eyes.

  “Shoot.”

  “Well, business has been a little slow tonight . . . a little too slow, and I suspect perhaps someone has given the very bad advice to customers that it would be a mistake for them to come visit me.”

  “We ain’t supposed to,” said the man, with delight in his eyes. “That’s what they say.”

  “You know, friend, there’s a lot of monkey business that goes on with this beautiful plant from the time it comes from someone like me until the time it reaches someone like you. Have a little whiff of this.”

  Zelven extended the palm of his hand with a fair share of green powder in it and poured it into the man’s hands, outstretched like those of a beggar.

  “Mmmm, smells sweet,” said the man, before sucking it up his nostrils greedily. He then gave a couple of quick shakes like a wet dog drying itself and said, “Okay, here’s what I know—anyone who buys from you’s gonna wish he didn’t. That’s what they say.”

  “Who’s ‘they’, friend? I’m a man of details. Specifics are to my mind what colors are to the painter’s eye.”

  “Well, I know where they stay at, but I don’t know their names. They’s the bosses of this section of town.”

  “Well, friend, here’s what you’re going to do. You walk towards the place, and when you’re there, stop and have another whiff of this,” Zelven said, extending an ounce to the man. “No one will know I’m following you, not even you. Once you’ve done as instructed, you’ll find the second ounce in your pocket before you count to a hundred.”

  The man’s face grew solemn for a moment, ageing him twenty years in the process, but then that mischievous gleam came back, and he turned to walk off down the street.

  Zelven’s hand shot out like a mamba and went around the man’s shoulder.

  “One more detail, friend. Play me like a fool, and I’ll be very cross.” As he said that, he pinched a nerve in the man’s shoulder he never knew he had but released it just as a howl of pain traveling up the man’s throat was about to depart. The quick cessation reduced it to a soft whimper.

  Soberly, the man said, “Yes, sir,” and took off down the street, practically trotting.

  Zelven disappeared behind several barrels and appeared no more than a minute later looking like an unshaven, greasy-haired vagrant. He took off down the street, guide in view.

  To the careless observer, the unrecognizable Zelven made perhaps a slightly excessive number of stretches and adjustments of his hat as he stealthily walked down the street eyes glued to his guide. But to the thirty Varco agents watching closely with small telescopes atop the roofs, Zelven was speaking to them quite clearly and succinctly.

  The slight adjustments of his hat, the movements of his fingers camouflaged by his decoy stretches, and last, but not least, the grinding of his right fist against his left palm communicated to them fully what they needed to know.

  Zelven was beginning to think he was going to have to break the drug addict’s neck, toss him aside, and formulate a new plan, when suddenly the druggie stopped, took a sniff of something from his lifted palm, and then even tilted his head slightly towards the left.

  Zelven gave another of his disguised signals, and just when the now-accountant drug addict reached number ninety-eight someone bumped into him and apologized. The distrustful druggie checked his pockets, having forgotten about Zelven’s promise and thinking instead that he had just been pickpocketed.

  Then his face changed quickly from abject despair to that of a child opening a birthday present as he discovered his precious ounce now had a twin brother. A mean, suspicious look then spread over his face, and he trotted off down a dark alley, perhaps headed towards some hole where he could sniff at pleasure for a couple months with no thieves to sully the fun.

  Zelven surveyed the building. It was quite a bit taller than the others, at six stories. Three men stood scowling at the entrance looking like a collection of granite statues. There was an alley on just one side of the building, and it was a narrow one and seemed fully within view of the three guard dogs.

  Zelven extracted a different cigar fro
m the one he had used to fire steel darts into the throats and eyes of his late would-be assassins and lit it calmly.

  As he approached the three guards, the nearest one turned towards him, an even meaner grimace now on his face, both arms crossed revealing forearms meatier than most men’s thighs, and with a sneer on his lips that looked so exaggerated Zelven wondered how he could wear it without laughing at his own ridiculousness.

  “What the f--- do you want, old man? Walk around, would ya.”

  “Got any greeeen?” Zelven asked, a rasp coming out of his mouth along with a cloud of smoke thick enough to be confused with a forest fire.

  “F---, man,” the scowler said with supreme annoyance, swatting at the smoke as if it were a swarm of hornets. “Get lost, would ya, or I’ll break you in half, fool!”

  “Eeee . . . nice to meet you, feller,” Zelven said, belching smoke out of his mouth, and turning to cross the street.

  “Ah, hell naw,” groused the scowler, taking a step and a half towards Zelven with what looked like the intention of belting him across the mouth with his right hand, but the four glaring eyes of his compatriots seemed to quickly draw him back to his post as effectively as though they had been four lassoes.

  Some of the smoke was drifting towards them now as well, though Scowler had certainly borne the brunt of it.

  “Fu’s crazy,” Scowler continued, as he resumed his post. “Man, he like to smoke though, HAA!” he suddenly exclaimed with what had been his first good-natured laugh in approximately three months, though as far his two compatriots knew it was his first ever. They looked at him suspiciously, frowning deeply.

  They then looked back to the front, hoping the night would get back to normal.

  “FU . . . LIKE . . . TO . . . SMOOOKE!!” Scowler suddenly sang out at the top of his lungs and then began laughing uncontrollably.

  “Hey, Kyle, get real, fool!” his adjacent guard told him with a vicious punch to the tricep to drive the point home.

  This brought forth more laughter than if he had tied Kyle down and tickled his feet with a feather. Kyle collapsed into a ball of howling laughter and began writhing on the ground. The third guard now joined in on the lecture by kicking Kyle right in the ribs.

  “Yo, Ky, snap out of it, man. I know somethin’s got you cracked up, but you’s gonna get all three of us killed, PUNK!!”

  He then gave another vicious kick to Kyle’s ribs, after which he began convulsing terribly.

  “Hey, man, suck it up and get up, you feel me?!” the man said hunching over his friend, now appearing to express some genuine concern.

  As the two huddled over their fallen, writhing compatriot, a now well-dressed Zelven slipped behind them and into the building.

  Kyle was now beginning to writhe in a manner that seemed exaggerated even for having been kicked by Big Gary. Sure, Big Gary had killed men before with a kick to the ribs, but those were normal-sized men, not muscle-bound sycamore trees like Kyle.

  “F---, Gary. I think you wasted him, hommie!”

  “Naw, man. Yo, Kyle! KYLE!!”

  Quite a few heads began to turn. Even for a seedy part of town, this could count as a spectacle.

  “Sh--, man. We gotta bring him inside, fool.”

  Kyle began writhing far worse as they dragged him towards the doorway, blood spurting out of his nose and eyes, and he began vomiting uncontrollably.

  He breathed his last at the very moment he crossed the threshold. He only beat his compatriot Jerry to the afterlife by a couple of seconds. As soon as Jerry crossed the threshold, a knife punched into the back of his right lung up to the hilt and then slit his throat from ear to ear with so much speed Big Gary didn’t even see the attack.

  By the time Big Gary turned to see his friend falling to the ground in a shuddering heap with blood gushing out of his neck he felt a small noose enclose around his neck and the tip of some sharp weapon poke against his ribs.

  “There will be plenty of time for crying and mourning later, young fella.”

  Gary started to turn towards his attacker, but the noose around his neck immediately tightened to the point he could feel blood trickling down his neck.

  “Easy there, fella. This ain’t a noose like one you’ve ever seen. One more squeeze with this lever I’ve got in my hand, and you’ll be with your two friends there in less than a blink.”

  Gary fumed, and tears strode down his face. Kyle and Jerry were his best friends. Perhaps he ought to join them.

  The unpleasant poke of the dagger convinced him life might be worth living after all.

  “Now show me where your boss is. The one who doesn’t believe in free markets.”

  “He’ll, he’ll, he’ll KILL you, man!” Gary said, struggling against the noose.

  “Do I seem like the risk-averse sort to ya?” Zelven asked in a singsong accent he sometimes used.

  Zelven gave another squeeze. He heard the gag reflex and released the noose just enough to let Gary vomit out a couple eruptions before warning him with a few tight squeezes to wrap that business up or choke on his own vomit.

  As soon as Zelven was convinced Gary had sufficiently cleared his airways, he resumed the pressure with the noose, lest he do something foolish like cry out.

  “March me to them, mate, or I’ll kill you right now,” Zelven said without any bluff, sticking the knife a full inch into Gary’s back, just shy of any vitals.

  Gary answered with his footsteps, which began moving quickly forward.

  Zelven heard a peculiar, but very familiar, rapping sound. He turned around slightly and noted with approval as he saw ten men spilling into the room from the street outside. He had no concerns about whipping a few punks inside, but the contents of this particular building had not been previously reconnoitered, and Varco training demanded preparation for the worst-case scenario.

  “Let’s get going,” Zelven told Gary. “If you’re no good to me as a guide, I’ll send you to join your departed friends.”

  Gary paused only the briefest of moments to consider his options before moving his large frame forward reluctantly like a stubborn plow horse that realizes its owner will cave its skull in if it refuses to budge.

  “Don’t even think about sneaky warnings,” Zelven instructed. “Whistles, knuckle-cracking, signature footsteps—they’re all plain language in highlighted bold caps to me, son.”

  Zelven thought he could see Gary’s bull-like neck turn a couple shades redder and almost feel the heat rising off of it.

  They continued walking up the stairs until Gary stopped and lightly rasped something.

  Zelven released the noose just enough to let him speak in a whisper: “The men you want to see are on the top floor. There are guards on every floor until the top, starting with the third floor. It’s because we keep a lot of . . . stuff here.”

  “Thank you, friend. You would only be a burden from here on out.”

  Zelven clamped down on the device holding the wire noose around Gary’s neck. It penetrated through the voice box almost instantly, severed a couple major arteries, and sent the large statue of a man tumbling towards the ground.

  With catlike reflexes, Zelven squatted down and slowed the man’s fall, permitting almost no sound to issue from the hulk’s demise.

  Zelven immediately gestured to his compatriots that the target was on the top floor and that every floor hereafter had guards.