The Left Series (Book 3): Left On The Brink Read online

  Larry was the front man for a syndicate who none of us regular guys had ever met or knew. Larry was our boss but his bosses were some ultimately rich and powerful men in high positions.

  “Larry, can you please stop breaking my heart and tell us the fucking details?” Jimmy spoke for the first time at the meeting. His voice was slightly high pitched and nasal.

  “All right, all right,” Larry grunted. “I don’t need you assholes busting my balls as well.” He glanced over at Mario for some support. “I don’t need these guys busting my balls.”

  “No ball busting today, Larry,” Mario retorted in a deep, gruff voice.

  The three of us sat staring at Larry, waiting for him to continue. I’d seen him do this kind of stuff many times over, playing for time, playing a charade to get us on his side.

  “Come on. Larry. The clock is ticking, I have to be someplace. What’s the deal?” Jimmy asked again.

  Larry sighed and placed his chubby hands flat on his desk. He looked at each one of us in turn, eye to eye. He spoke in a cold, harsh low tone. “The deal is five grand a man, one now and four when the job is completed. I want this Marquez cocksucker dead and I want that 50-K back.”

  “Any idea where he is, Larry? Do I have to pack my shades and shorts?” I asked.

  Larry nodded and smirked slightly. “Yeah, I know where the son of a bitch is. He’s in Canada.”

  I sighed and looked down at Toni’s rancid sneakers. Larry’s operations usually had a catch and there was the big obstacle, right there in the last word he said. Canada.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Canada?” Jimmy barked. “Fuck me, Larry! You’re talking about crossing borders here. A trip to Miami is one thing, but going across an international boundary is a whole different ball park.” Jimmy stood from his chair in protest, his voice becoming higher pitched with every word he spoke.

  “Quit whining and sit down, you little pissant,” Mario growled from the corner of the office.

  Jimmy shut his mouth and did as he was told, but his protests were on the same lines as my thinking. This operation was not going to be a walk in the park by any stretch of the imagination. I just hoped Larry had this whole thing figured out.

  Larry raised his hand, palm upwards and waited a beat until Jimmy had sat down and calmed down.

  “I never said it was going to be easy. That’s why I asked you guys because I know you’re professionals.”

  I nearly snorted in disgust, going by the two guys either side of me.

  “So what do you propose, Larry?” I asked, calmly. I wanted to hear all the gory details. If I thought his planning sucked, I was going to walk away from the job. I wished I had just got up and walked away at that moment. But hindsight is a beautiful thing.

  Larry got serious and lowered his voice, like he was telling secrets out of school. “This Marques guy is holed up in a small town outside of Toronto,” he began. “I’ve got a source up there and he claims Marques is starting up his cultivating business again, offering the merchandise to the highest bidder. He has two nasty little Puerto Rican fucks that ride with him and provide the muscle…”

  “Hey, wait a minute, Larry,” Jimmy butted in again with yet another founded protest. “You didn’t say nothing about three guys in total.”

  Larry gave Jimmy a quizzical glare. “So, I’m telling you now, fuck face. Interrupt me again while I’m talking and I’ll have Mario here, shoot you through the kneecap, comprende?”

  Mario stiffened as if to confirm he was standing by to do some shooting.

  “All right, pray continue,” Jimmy said with a hint of sarcasm, slumping against the back of his chair.

  Larry cleared his throat and carried on reciting his plans for the downfall of Mr. Marquez. I remembered listening to Larry bleating on but his exact words faded from my mind. The reminiscence of the overwhelming heat in that cramped office and the overpowering stench of Toni’s sneakers were etched in my memory.

  Time fast forwarded in Smith’s memory trance. Slight recollections of a long drive to a small place called Tuscarora Bay, on the U.S. side shores of Lake Ontario, flickered in his mind. The bay sat somewhere between Niagara Falls to the west and Rochester, New York, to the east.

  Smith teamed up with Jimmy and Toni on the quayside. The unfriendly trio took a night crossing, swiftly cutting across the lake in a speedboat, helmed by another of Larry’s associates.

  The unsociable, son of a bitch who drove the speedboat dropped us at a secluded spot somewhere on the shore of Frenchman’s Bay. We were met by a rough looking guy with a big, bushy gray beard, who told us his name was ‘Chuck.’ I felt uneasy as we clambered into Chuck’s beaten up station wagon and drove away into the night, heading north-west. He drove through the city of Pickering and out into the countryside.

  We sped along a deserted road and I watched the shadowy tall trees sitting amongst the dark fields flash by my window. Chuck took us to an old, two-storey, empty red brick farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. He handed us a map and a bunch of keys before letting us out of his battered vehicle.

  “Everything you need is in the closet upstairs in the front bedroom,” Chuck said in a gravelly voice. He hawked up and spat out of the driver’s window then U-turned and sped away in his shitty station wagon, leaving us spluttering on the diesel fumes while standing on the gravel driveway.

  I held the keys and the map in each hand as I studied the front of the dark farmhouse. The front sash windows shed no light; only an inky blackness lay beyond the cracked glass panes. The place gave off a cold and uninviting vibe, like it was telling us to stay the fuck away. A cold shiver ran down my spine but I tried to get my professional head on. Once the job was done, we could get the hell away from this God forsaken place.

  “Well…let’s go take a look around,” I muttered.

  Jimmy and Toni hesitantly followed me to the red colored front door. I fumbled with the keys, trying a few different ones in the lock until the door opened. The hinges creaked loudly as I pushed the door open and I honestly expected ‘Lurch’ or a guy called ‘Igor’ to be waiting on the other side of the threshold.

  “Jesus! This place is giving me the fucking creeps,” Jimmy hissed.

  I was glad I wasn’t the only one feeling uneasy.

  We cautiously stepped into the farmhouse interior and Toni flicked on the lights. I was amazed the place actually had power when the dim, overhead bulb illuminated the narrow hallway. Dusty wooden boards ran the length of the lobby with two rooms lying on each side of the floor space. A wooden staircase ascended into darkness beyond the two doorways to our left. We continued through the hallway to the large, open plan kitchen at the rear of the house. Jimmy turned on the light and we saw the facilities were bog-basic at best. A big wooden table sat in the center of the room with four rickety looking chairs surrounding it. A stained wooden countertop on our left enveloped a huge cracked sink with rusting taps. The work surface ran the length of the kitchen wall and battered closets stood at leaning angles beneath. The French windows looked out over an expanse of a dark, overgrown field that maybe once had been a garden of some sort.

  “This ‘aint exactly The Plaza,” Jimmy sighed, studying the cobwebbed coated ceiling.

  I tossed the map and keys onto the table and Toni slid a chair across the copper colored floor tiles then parked his ass on the seat.

  Jimmy gave me a quizzical glance. “Shall we take a look around?”

  I nodded. “Good idea. That douche bag said everything we needed was in the closet in the front bedroom.”

  “Let’s go see what tools they’ve given us for the job,” Jimmy said, making his way back to the hallway.

  “You coming?” I asked Toni.

  I received a grunt of refusal and he lit a cigarette. “Fucking place is the pits,” he spat, tossing his match onto the dirty floor.

  “Well…hopefully, we won’t have to suffer this shit hole for too long,” I said, before following Jimmy to the upper floor.
r />   The front bedroom was empty apart from a steel, six foot tall locker standing against the back wall. Mold stained, once white wall paper peeled itself away from the plaster walls and curled over the top of the locker. I tried the handle but the closet was locked. Jimmy nipped back downstairs and retrieved the keys from the kitchen table.

  I matched the key with the lock by the manufacturer’s name embossed on each of them. The locker opened and we peered inside. A rack of black clothing hung from a central rail and a black leather holdall sat on the bottom shelf. Jimmy pulled out the bag and unfastened the zipper. We took a peek inside and saw three, shiny black Sig P220 handguns complete with spare ammunition, attachable laser sights and suppressors.

  Jimmy whistled through his teeth. “Now, you’re talking,” he squeaked.

  “Good enough to take out three guys,” I said.

  That sentiment of over confidence would come back to haunt us.

  Chapter Eighteen

  We took the holdall and the clothes back downstairs and piled the contents onto the kitchen table. Toni’s eyes widened with interest when Jimmy showed him the Sig handguns and he could hardly contain his excitement when I pulled out three sheathed Blackhawk hunting knives stashed below the handguns. Three small, black monocular spy scopes were also stashed in the holdall as well as three basic cell phones.

  “Okay, let’s get down to it, Boppers,” I said, picking up the map. “Let’s see where this cocksucker is in relation to our position.”

  I studied the map and noticed two points had been circled in pencil. The locations were roughly within two miles of each other. One map point was clearly the empty farmhouse and the other circled position was obviously our intended target’s location.

  Jimmy turned on the cell phones and one text message pinged onto the screen.

  “Use vehicle in garage. Carry out collection tomorrow night. Ditch all equipment in lake on return. Call Chuck on provided number when job completed,” Jimmy read the text aloud. He hit a few buttons on the phone. “One preprogrammed number under ‘Chuck.’ He’s obviously our getaway driver.”

  I didn’t like relying on too many other people when carrying out an operation but we were in alien territory so we had no choice but to roll with Larry’s planning.

  We went back outside and opened the garage door. Toni flicked on the light and we saw a black colored, Nissan X-Trail SUV sitting in the center of the concrete floor space. Not the most fantastic vehicle in the world but it was inconspicuous and hopefully reliable.

  The three of us decided to take the Nissan for a spin and see how the land laid between us and Marques’s location. I grabbed the map and locked up the farmhouse. We didn’t take any weapons with us, only one of the monocular scopes so we could at least take a look at the target’s locality without getting too close.

  Jimmy drove the SUV, I navigated using the map and we found Marques’s place without too much trouble. His house was similar in layout to the one we were staying in, except it was built in a wooden clapboard style with a corrugated iron roof. The place was surrounded by open fields and situated at the end of a long, bumpy dirt track. Marques’s farmhouse was dark and didn’t look like he had much in the way of security. No wire fences surrounded the property and no dogs barked. We drove halfway down the track then turned around in a field gateway when we were satisfied. We decided there and then that I’d go into the property from the front and Toni and Jimmy would storm through the back.

  “Should be a piece of cake,” Toni sniffed as we bumped over the pot holed track.

  We drove back to our farmhouse and killed the next twenty-four hours by sleeping, perpetually cleaning the handguns and going over the entry strategy time and time again. I hated the waiting game in those sorts of operations. Trying to relieve the constant boredom was a big factor in hanging around for hours with nothing much to do. We ate almost all the tinned food in the kitchen closets and were careful to clean and wipe down all the utensils and cutlery we used. Leaving DNA and fingerprints for the cops to find was a sure way of getting caught.

  Night time finally rolled around and we waited until the small hours before making a move. We dressed in the black combat gear and loaded the weapons, also applying the suppressors. Toni seemed agitated and nervous as we climbed into the Nissan. I gave Jimmy a worried glance and secretively nodded at Toni in the back seat. He returned a small nod as if he understood my concern.

  Jimmy drove back out to Marques’s farmhouse and we parked off the road in the shadows, underneath the branches of a tall tree at the bottom end of the dirt track. We sat and waited for around an hour, studying the house and surrounding grounds through the scopes. We saw a small, skinny guy dressed in a white vest and short pants, come out of the front door of the house to smoke a cigarette and take a piss. He went back inside and the house was silent once more.

  We waited a few minutes for the guy to go back to bed or settle back into whatever the hell he was doing. I felt my stomach flutter with nervousness as the time for commencement of the operation drew near.

  “Everybody ready?” I asked in a whisper.

  “Yeah,” Jimmy confidently hissed.

  Toni mumbled something in the back.

  We slipped on our black balaclava hoods and climbed out of the SUV, ensuring we silently closed the doors.

  “Double check your cell phones are on but the ringtones are on silent,” I said.

  We synchronized the times on the cell phones and checked the settings were on silent.

  “Okay, let’s go,” I hissed.

  We moved silently, keeping to the long grass at the edges of the dirt track. The half moon shimmered in a cloudless, black sky as we approached the property. My heart hammered in my chest as I tried to quell the tension pulsing through my body. I crept towards the front door and stood to the left side of the threshold. Crouching down, I waited for Jimmy and Toni to circle the building’s perimeter to the back door. We’d decided to make our simultaneous entry at precisely 03:30 A.M.

  I held the cell phone in my left hand and the Sig in my right, breathing heavily underneath the balaclava. The last couple of minutes ticked by very slowly and I felt sweat roll down my forehead underneath the hood. My mouth was dry and I felt the muscles tighten in my legs due to my crouching stance. I shuffled slightly to avoid the onset of cramp.

  The digital numbers finally changed to the allocated time slot. I swallowed away a lump of anxiety and sprang to my feet. I tried the handle but the door was locked. A swift, hard kick in the center smashed the latch beside the jamb and the door swung open.

  I waited a beat in case anybody was lurking nearby inside, then quickly and silently moved through the doorway into the dark front room when no shouts of alarm or gunshots sounded. I slid along the interior wall searching for the light switch.

  The sounds of Toni and Jimmy breaking in through the back doors echoed through the house. Those two clowns were making too much damn noise. A hallway light blinked on to my right, bathing the front room in a yellowy glow. I moved to the doorway still hugging the wall and crouched by the frame. Somebody pounded down the stairs, screeching something in Spanish.

  When I heard the footfalls on the wooden boards beyond the front room, I ducked out from my hiding place holding the Sig in a firing stance. The guy in the white vest we’d seen earlier, stood a few feet in front of me in the hallway. He turned and a look of shock and terror spread over his face. I didn’t wait for him to try and run or retaliate and fired two rounds into his chest.

  The Sig popped in my hand and the guy went down on his back. Two bullet holes in the center of his chest seeped blood, staining his white vest and pooling beneath his torso. One down two to go. This guy wasn’t Marques but was obviously one of his bodyguards.

  Gunshots reverberated around the hallway and flecks of drywall plaster showered my left shoulder. I turned and saw a guy with long black hair in a blue T-shirt and red shorts, standing at the top of the stairs, hurriedly trying to reload a shotgu
n. I raised the Sig, took aim and fired a double tap at the guy’s head. The first shot hit him in the throat and the second ripped through his cheek. His head snapped back and the shotgun fell from his grasp. The guy slammed against the wall behind him then he toppled forwards and rolled down the stairs, landing in an ungainly, twisted heap in the hallway.

  More gunshots rang out from another room towards the back of the house. The gunfire sounded like a semi-automatic assault rifle. I wondered what kind of firepower these guys were packing. I’d killed two of them so the latest burst of fire should be coming from Marques himself, if our intelligence was correct.

  I crept through the house, closing in on the source of the gunfire. Nobody occupied the other ground floor rooms as I peeked through the doors. I heard the pops of a suppressed handgun firing two shots, then two more a few seconds later. The house became eerily silent and several different scenarios ran through my mind. Every few seconds, I glanced behind me, expecting somebody to be creeping up on me. A chill ran up and down my spine and I just wanted to get the hell out of the place.

  I peered around the doorframe at the end of the hallway and saw a large kitchen area beyond. Toni had removed his balaclava hood and crouched over a small Chinese guy lying prone on the floor. Toni had a demented look on his face and held the hunting knife close to the Chinese guy’s face.

  I trod cautiously into the kitchen, still with my Sig at the ready. I glanced around the room and saw Jimmy lying on his back on the gray tiled floor between two tall closets. His eyes remained open but he was staring up at nothing. Blood bubbled from his mouth and several bullet holes peppered his abdomen.

  “Shit!” I croaked. We’d lost one of our team, which wasn’t good. Where there was a body, there was blood that was also incriminating evidence.

  Another dead guy, with short black hair and a scarred face, dressed in a burgundy bathrobe was propped with his back against the far wall next to a big, circular table. The bathrobe was open to his navel, revealing several fatal bullet wounds in his chest. An AK 47 rifle lay beside the corpse.