Read Online Resurrection Express by Stephen Romano - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Stephen Romano
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room.
Yes . . .
I see the leads laid from end to end, but I don’t trust them now. My so-called plot got ten innocent people murdered by a psychopath who thinks he can play with everyone’s life and get away with it. And he’s right, isn’t he?
I don’t trust my own plans.
I have to trust these people.
Toni, I just might have killed you again.
Please forgive me.
Please be alive when I find you.
Please.
• • •
T he next morning, we all meet again in the war room under the barn.
Jenison tells me I’m now officially dead.
She works fast.
There were two unidentified Caucasian males blown away in front of the toy store during the drive-by, probably homeless guys. One of them roughly fit my description. They pulled prints off the body and guess what. Matched with mine, spot on. Really tragic, a kid that young, out on good behavior, looking to make his life right again, cut down in a senseless random eruption of wholesale violence that’s still shocking the nation. My father will die soon, too, but not like this. They have to wait for another opportunity. Dad suggests at the table that he kill himself the next time an old man washes up somewhere in Texas with a shotgun in his mouth. Suicide makes sense. A lot of remorseful fathers do that after their kids check out.
They’ve decided on the Sarge’s acceleration plan. The run is in just three days. It’s an old-school sweep-and-clear, just like the kind me and Dad used to pull when we were the kings of the world. A seven-man team, led by him and the Sarge.
I was right about the quiet redhead—she turns out to be a hotshot air force computer specialist. She’ll be my right arm during the job.
Her name is Alex Bennett.
She’s an airman first class, just three years younger than me.
The flyboys press buttons, the marines blow shit up.
I only know all that because Jenison hands me a folder with some highlights from the lady’s service record in it. It’s an impressive résumé, but Bennett still never says a word to me. Now that I realize she’s so much older than I thought she was, I notice she’s a lot more beautiful. But the hard lines that encase her amber eyes tell tales of bad business, all confirmed by the papers in front of me: a fairly recent rotation in Baghdad, during the last years of the war, a couple of black ops before that, all classified. Her job was to deactivate bombs—the high-tech kind. Not pipe explosives riggedto primitive detonators and car batteries in the street. No, we’re talking about major works of art, crafted by well-paid professionals. Labyrinthine deadfall canyons ruled by computers and time locks—the kind I bust in my sleep. She has twenty-seven commendations for shutting down that kind of death trap. She’s an expensive commodity on a job like this.
Her cold expression steels the air, as Jenison makes some pictures come up on the flat-screen. Photographs of young women.
“Elroy, how much do you know about the business of human trafficking in the United States?” She stops on a photo of the blonde I saw before with Toni. The blonde is standing in front of a church in a schoolgirl uniform, shot from a block away with a telescopic lens, digital camera, probably an XL Canon. Toni had one of those. She was in my dad’s face with it all the time, even though she never took pictures of any of us. It was an oddball family joke because they never got along. Can I shoot you with my Canon, Dad?
“Not much,” I tell Jenison as she folds her hands, finding some Zen. “I know in some other countries child prostitution is legal.”
“It’s practically legal here, too,” the Sarge says. “You just ain’t allowed to advertise.”
Jenison lets out a grim breath. “What Sergeant Rainone means to say is that this sort of trafficking has reached epidemic proportions just below the radar in the past two decades. Texas has one of the worst concentrations, mostly because of the senators and high-ranking
Yes . . .
I see the leads laid from end to end, but I don’t trust them now. My so-called plot got ten innocent people murdered by a psychopath who thinks he can play with everyone’s life and get away with it. And he’s right, isn’t he?
I don’t trust my own plans.
I have to trust these people.
Toni, I just might have killed you again.
Please forgive me.
Please be alive when I find you.
Please.
• • •
T he next morning, we all meet again in the war room under the barn.
Jenison tells me I’m now officially dead.
She works fast.
There were two unidentified Caucasian males blown away in front of the toy store during the drive-by, probably homeless guys. One of them roughly fit my description. They pulled prints off the body and guess what. Matched with mine, spot on. Really tragic, a kid that young, out on good behavior, looking to make his life right again, cut down in a senseless random eruption of wholesale violence that’s still shocking the nation. My father will die soon, too, but not like this. They have to wait for another opportunity. Dad suggests at the table that he kill himself the next time an old man washes up somewhere in Texas with a shotgun in his mouth. Suicide makes sense. A lot of remorseful fathers do that after their kids check out.
They’ve decided on the Sarge’s acceleration plan. The run is in just three days. It’s an old-school sweep-and-clear, just like the kind me and Dad used to pull when we were the kings of the world. A seven-man team, led by him and the Sarge.
I was right about the quiet redhead—she turns out to be a hotshot air force computer specialist. She’ll be my right arm during the job.
Her name is Alex Bennett.
She’s an airman first class, just three years younger than me.
The flyboys press buttons, the marines blow shit up.
I only know all that because Jenison hands me a folder with some highlights from the lady’s service record in it. It’s an impressive résumé, but Bennett still never says a word to me. Now that I realize she’s so much older than I thought she was, I notice she’s a lot more beautiful. But the hard lines that encase her amber eyes tell tales of bad business, all confirmed by the papers in front of me: a fairly recent rotation in Baghdad, during the last years of the war, a couple of black ops before that, all classified. Her job was to deactivate bombs—the high-tech kind. Not pipe explosives riggedto primitive detonators and car batteries in the street. No, we’re talking about major works of art, crafted by well-paid professionals. Labyrinthine deadfall canyons ruled by computers and time locks—the kind I bust in my sleep. She has twenty-seven commendations for shutting down that kind of death trap. She’s an expensive commodity on a job like this.
Her cold expression steels the air, as Jenison makes some pictures come up on the flat-screen. Photographs of young women.
“Elroy, how much do you know about the business of human trafficking in the United States?” She stops on a photo of the blonde I saw before with Toni. The blonde is standing in front of a church in a schoolgirl uniform, shot from a block away with a telescopic lens, digital camera, probably an XL Canon. Toni had one of those. She was in my dad’s face with it all the time, even though she never took pictures of any of us. It was an oddball family joke because they never got along. Can I shoot you with my Canon, Dad?
“Not much,” I tell Jenison as she folds her hands, finding some Zen. “I know in some other countries child prostitution is legal.”
“It’s practically legal here, too,” the Sarge says. “You just ain’t allowed to advertise.”
Jenison lets out a grim breath. “What Sergeant Rainone means to say is that this sort of trafficking has reached epidemic proportions just below the radar in the past two decades. Texas has one of the worst concentrations, mostly because of the senators and high-ranking
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