Coming Home to Roost: Chapter 9

“L.T.!” I exclaimed.  “it’s good to hear your voice.  How you doin’?”

“I’m doin’ okay, Michael.  How about you?”

“Not bad, not bad.  Oh, I had a lit­tle mishap a cou­ple of weeks ago.  My house burned down.”

“You call that a lit­tle mishap?”

“Well, I got out unscathed.  And the rebuild­ing process is under­way.  And the insur­ance is going to cov­er every­thing.  So I can’t com­plain too much.”

“Uh, Michael.  I’m glad to hear you weren’t hurt, but this isn’t just a cour­tesy call.”

“Oh?  Not anoth­er job offer, I hope.”

“No, not this time.  Michael, some­one is out to kill you.” 

The words were blurt­ed out like it was noth­ing more than a nor­mal weath­er report.

“What?”

“You remem­ber that job you did for us a few years ago in Turkey?  The guy who was run­ning a kid­nap­ping ring, bring­ing girls into Turkey from Georgia and Syria and Armenia and hold­ing them cap­tive as pros­ti­tutes, keep­ing them on drugs?”

“Of course.  Nasty work.  We man­aged to get over a hun­dred girls released.”

“Yeah.  Well, some­how, that guy’s broth­er — one you did­n’t dis­pose of — has appar­ent­ly found out who you are, and he’s in the coun­try look­ing to repay the favor.”

“How’d he find out about me?”

“I’m afraid we have no idea, but the Turkish National Intelligence Organization had infor­ma­tion on the guy, and we were alert­ed to his trav­el by them.”

“Do you know his name or where he is?”

“His name’s Alev Celik, but we’ve lost track of him.  He’s been in-coun­try for over a month, so he could be any­where.  Not sure that’s his real name since the com­bined words mean ‘flame’ and ‘steel,’ so it could just be some­thing he’s acquired.

“You said your house burned down? How?”

“Propane tank explosion.”

“Any more acci­dents recently?”

“No. Wait a minute. The brakes on my car went out just yes­ter­day.  And the guy at the repair shop said the brake flu­id line looked like it had been eat­en through.  Said he’d nev­er seen any­thing like it before.”

“They could be coin­ci­dences, Michael. But it could also mean that Celik has found you and is try­ing to make your death look like an accident.

“And anoth­er thing to think about is that if he can’t be suc­cess­ful at ‘acci­den­tal’ death means, he might resort to some­thing more overt, like a long-range shot or a per­son­al attack.  He would prob­a­bly have a hard time com­ing by a rifle, not being a legal res­i­dent, but he has a rep­u­ta­tion as a knife fighter.

“Have you noticed any strange char­ac­ters around late­ly, any cars that seem to be around too often?”

“I haven’t real­ly noticed any­thing unusu­al recent­ly, but I’ve been pret­ty involved in get­ting the house rebuilt.  It’s pos­si­ble I’ve been less atten­tive than I might nor­mal­ly be.

“But this infor­ma­tion brings one thing to mind.”

“What’s that?”

“He might be dri­ving a black BMW.  Can you give me any­thing on what he looks like?”

“Yeah, some. He’s about five-feet-ten, slen­der, with dark hair, and he sports a mus­tache and goa­tee.  He also has a small vis­i­ble tat­too, three ‘tears’ that appear to be com­ing from his left eye.  Afraid we don’t have any­thing more than that.”

L.T. con­tin­ued to fill me in on all the infor­ma­tion he had regard­ing Celik, and, despite the por­tent of the moment, we man­aged to get in some small talk before he con­clud­ed with, “If there’s any­thing I can do to help, Michael, just let me know.  I hope this infor­ma­tion is useful.”

“Well, I’m cer­tain­ly bet­ter off than I was before you called.  At least now I’ll have my guard up.  Thanks a lot, L.T.”

“No prob­lem, Michael.  You take care.”

In his typ­i­cal man­ner, he rang off abrupt­ly, and I was left to pon­der what he had told me.

At least it was some­what com­fort­ing to know that I was not sim­ply expe­ri­enc­ing a run of nasty luck, that there may well be some pur­pose behind some recent events.

I real­ized that I had only my Sig and the com­bat knife in the house as pos­si­ble defense weapons.  They would be easy to car­ry with me while I was out and about, but some­thing more potent might be nec­es­sary.  I decid­ed to make a trip back to the vault and col­lect a few more items to cov­er addi­tion­al pos­si­ble contingencies. 

There was noth­ing going on at the site at the time, as the demo­li­tion con­trac­tor had com­plet­ed his work. I was just wait­ing for Martin to com­plete the con­struc­tion doc­u­ments so we could select a build­ing con­trac­tor.  Martin had told me that it was nec­es­sary to com­plete the draw­ings before choos­ing a con­trac­tor because any­one who might want to put in a bid would want a set of draw­ings to be sure they were all bid­ding on the same con­tent.  I expect­ed those doc­u­ments would be ready in anoth­er week or two.

I kept the Sig close to hand that night, prob­a­bly out of an excess of cau­tion, but that same cau­tion had kept me out of some poten­tial­ly tick­lish spots in years past, so I had learned to make use of it.

About eleven the next morn­ing, Barry called to let me know that the car was fixed.  I asked if he could have some­one deliv­er it and offered that I would pro­vide a ride back to his shop and pay him then.  He read­i­ly acqui­esced, and I was wait­ing as the Lexus pulled up in front of the house about a quar­ter to twelve.

After dri­ving back to the auto repair shop and pay­ing the bill, I head­ed out to the home­stead.  It was time to up-arm.