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  THIN LINE

  A JACK NOBLE NOVEL

  BY: L.T. RYAN

  PUBLISHED BY: LIQUID MIND MEDIA, LLC

  COPYRIGHT © 2014

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and events are the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously.

  QUICK LINKS

  Start Reading

  Other Books by L.T. Ryan

  Table of Contents

  Jack Noble Series in Order

  The Recruit

  Noble Beginnings

  A Deadly Distance

  Thin Line

  Noble Intentions Season One

  Noble Intentions Season Two

  Noble Intentions Season Three

  Never Go Home (Jack Noble)

  Beyond Betrayal (Clarissa Abbot Thriller)

  Noble Intentions Season Four - Coming May, 2014

  Visit http://ltryan.com/newsletter to join L.T. Ryan's mailing list, and receive a complimentary copy of The Recruit: A Jack Noble Short Story

  CHAPTER 1

  December 31, 2006

  "THE TARGET'S NAME is Brett Taylor, and this'll be your toughest assignment yet."

  Frank Skinner set the blue folder in front of me, opened to Taylor's service record. A paper clip held a small photo to the upper left side of the folder. A head shot of a face chiseled from stone, with eyes that gave a glimpse into a heart made of ice. I read over the file, then glanced at the picture again. I might as well have been looking into a mirror. There were a few similarities between me and the target. Physically we were identical: 6'2", 220. We'd both enlisted in the military at the age of eighteen. He went into the Army; I became a Marine. We had both been selected for special assignment during boot camp.

  I turned to the next page. It was blank. Every single one that followed was as well. There were only a few reasons for that.

  "I'm not kidding, Jack," Frank continued. He pushed off the desktop and rolled backward. A rusted wheel squeaked until his chair collided into the wall with a soft thud. "This guy makes you look like a teddy bear. While you were off playing with the CIA guarding doors in Baghdad and whatnot, Taylor was doing black ops so insidious that any record indicating they'd ever even been thought of has been incinerated. When you were playing anti-terrorist agent along with me, he was taking down cell leaders before they even knew that they wanted to blow something up. He's the ultimate government weapon. And my understanding is that lately those hostile to the Nation's interests were not his only targets."

  I looked up from the documents and met Frank's stare. His dark eyes didn't waver. I saw fear, perhaps. Anytime we had one of these meetings, Frank looked serious. Lips, nose, jaw, eyebrows, all could be manipulated. But his tone and gestures conveyed more concern than I'd ever seen from him. And we had a history that went back nearly five years to the summer of 2002, when he had hand-selected me to join him as his partner in the SIS. Together, we'd faced our share of men who had no regard for the welfare of others - so many that Frank's warning list read like the back of a cereal box.

  What was so different about Brett Taylor?

  "Can you give any examples?"

  Frank leaned back in his chair and placed both hands behind his shaking head. "You know I can't do that."

  "A hint, then?"

  Frank said nothing. He bit at his bottom lip - a tell that he was considering revealing more than he should. I had to press.

  "Hell, give me a country, Frank. I can take it from there."

  For guys like us, news headlines read like a Who's Doing What in the espionage and assassin community. Nothing was ever as tidy as they made it sound in the papers and on TV.

  Frank shook his head. "Can't do it. Not yet, at least. You live to finish the job, then we'll talk."

  I closed the folder, pushed it toward Frank. "Nothing but a bunch of blank pages in there."

  "That's to make a point."

  "Which is?"

  "Don't underestimate this guy. Every single one of those blank pages, and there's at least fifty, could be filled with details of the assignments this guy has completed."

  "I get it. He's a badass. Jesus, Frank. How long have I been doing this?" I rose and shoved the chair to the side with my leg, and then leaned back against the glass wall and shoved my hands in my pockets. The glass felt cold against the back of my arms.

  Frank remained silent. Thick jaw muscles rippled at the corners of his face as he stared me down. There was plenty about Taylor, and the job, that he wasn't willing to share. Or had been prohibited from revealing. At times, things worked that way. We'd all become accustomed to it. And it was beneficial. The less I knew about a target, the easier it was to complete the assignment. The less Frank knew, the less guilt there might be over handing it over to me. I operated with the general understanding that if a government agency signed off on an order and sent me to someone's door, there was a pretty good reason. The justice I was dispatched to enforce was quick and generally merciful.

  We should all be so lucky.

  So, Brett Taylor, while he provided service to his country for over a decade, must've done something pretty heinous for me to be sitting across from Frank, staring at a blank service record.

  I sat down, placed my arm on the desk, leaned forward. "Where and when?"

  "New York," he said. "Brooklyn. Close to Prospect Park. He's due back ten days from now, on Tuesday, the ninth."

  I had a place in New York. A few friends there, too. It'd be better if they didn't know I was coming into town, though. Not for something like this.

  "Know his itinerary?" I said.

  "Not yet, but we'll get it."

  "He in the States now?"

  "Coming in international."

  "From where?"

  "Not sure yet."

  "I'll have Bear tail him."

  Frank pressed his lips together so tightly they turned white. He'd never been a fan of my partner, Riley "Bear" Logan, whose nickname suited the guy in more ways than one. The big man and I had been best friends since boot camp. After I left the SIS, we went into business for ourselves. I trusted him with my life, and I didn't care what any of my contacts thought. Bear handled himself and got results. We were a great team.

  Better than Frank and I ever were.

  "He's in," I said. "Or I'm out."

  Frank took a few deep, ragged breaths, and then nodded. "I'll make sure you have the flight info in time. I'm waiting on additional details of Taylor's offices, residences, and so on, in case there are alternatives. I'll fax them over as soon as I get them. Meanwhile, limit how many sources you reach out to. As you can imagine, if something this high-profile leaks, we'll all go down for it."

  "Got it." I rose, turned, grabbed the door handle and pulled it open an inch. The air from the overhead vent shot past me on the path of least resistance.

  Take one more shot at it, I thought.

  Letting the door fall closed, I turned around. "What'd this guy do?"

  Frank diverted his focus to his computer monitor and shook his head.

  "Come on, Frank. Just between you and me."

  A single laugh escaped past his pursed lips. He shuffled his mouse around on a gray square pad, clicking the left and right buttons. "You know people end up on these lists at times because of conversations that go too far. If I say anything more, it'll be someone like Brett Taylor paying a visit to both of us."

  "Fair enough." I turned my back to him.

  "Jack."

  I didn't look back. "Yeah?"

  "Close this one out, and maybe I'll tell you everyt
hing over a pitcher or three. In the meantime, happy New Year."

  CHAPTER 2

  LOCATED ON 4TH Street between 6th and 7th Avenue, the five-story brownstone loomed like weathered ruins amid the surrounding rehabbed and renovated buildings. The owner had received multiple unsolicited offers to purchase for reasonable sums, but he had refused to sell. The building held too much value for him. Presumably Brett Taylor didn't care that the building was in shambles, or that nine of the ten apartments inside matched the rough exterior. I guess everything he needed existed in that tenth pristine apartment.

  Between Frank and one of my sources, I had a five-year history on the building as well as the day-to-day nuances of life within its walls.

  When the block showed no human activity, I crossed the street and forced my way inside the brownstone. A combination of human waste, sweat, mildew, and cigarette smoke pelted me, and I nearly gagged at the overwhelming stench. After a few moments I adjusted, and then continued past the entrance hall, which branched in two, one passage leading east and the other west.

  The first floor had four apartments. From the looks of things, transients and homeless occupied these units when Taylor wasn't there. Same with the two units on the second floor. The fourth and fifth floors contained a single residence each. For whatever reason, Taylor had chosen to forgo the supposed prestige of a penthouse, and lived in an apartment on the third floor.

  I started my search in the west hall. My primary concern was security equipment - anything that would give our position away or record our actions when Bear and I returned to complete the job. I saw no cameras on the outside, and none at the entrance. Presumably, Taylor had some sort of a monitoring system in place. Men in his position had to.

  The apartments on the first floor had all been occupied recently, although they were empty at the moment. Leftover cellophane wrappers, soda cans, and liquor bottles were strewn about. Body odor lingered, a stench nearly as foul as that at the main entrance.

  At the end of the east hall was a door that opened up to stairs leading to the basement. I followed them down, sticking to the edges to minimize squeaking. The room below the building was wide open from foundation wall to foundation wall, aside from evenly spaced support columns that resembled an old man's bowed legs. An old furnace sat dormant in the middle of the rear wall, the bricks surrounding it several shades darker than the rest. The floor was covered in an inch of soot and dust. Pristine. No footprints. Clearly no one ventured into the brownstone's basement these days. I walked along the perimeter of the room and remained on the lookout for electrical wires and communication lines. Only thing I found was brick and mortar and dust.

  Satisfied that the basement was just that, I hiked back up the stairs, bypassing the first floor landing, and made my way through the building's second level.

  Again, I found the rooms looking recently occupied, but currently empty. Perhaps Taylor had a system of letting the homeless that frequented his building know when he'd return. Use my place, but don't dare be there when I get back. Perhaps his way of repenting for the sins he committed for our government.

  I made the journey from the second floor to the third with more trepidation. So far, there were no signs of security. That had to change. Still, I didn't find anything.

  Of the two units on the third floor, one was used by Taylor.

  I searched the unoccupied third floor apartment first. Unlike the units of the first two levels, no one had been inside this space for quite some time. Maybe not since the last tenant, who might even have died in the room. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling and draped the walls. Roaches scattered as light penetrated the space for the first time in perhaps years. I couldn't see them, but their thin legs scratched the hardwood floor with a sound like someone clawing their way out of a wooden box.

  The place was fully furnished. The furnishings had to be sixty or seventy years old, with a few turn-of-the-century pieces. The kind of stuff my mother had, but never let me or my brother or my sister sit on. And don't let your friends near it, Jack! Antique picture frames housed yellowing photographs. A young woman. A young man. A young couple, together. Her in her wedding dress, him in his suit. Her perched on his lap. A baby. A child. A teenager. The sequence was repeated at the other end in reverse. One boy, one girl. One happy couple aging decades in a series of photographs perched on the mantle. A casket cross etched with the name "Robert." He died first. She remained in the apartment, loyal to him, waiting to return to him, until her final day passed.

  I returned to the hallway. Examined the area surrounding the front door of Taylor's apartment. Again, I found nothing. He'd concealed his security and monitoring devices well. When Bear and I returned, we'd have to bring equipment to aid in our search, and disrupt any communications equipment he had on site.

  The search concluded with a quick tour of the fourth and fifth floors. These were big hollow spaces void of furnishings. After passing through the fourth floor, I expected the top level to be full of computers or weapons or an army, even. None of that. And no signs anyone had been up there in some time. A fine layer of dust coated the hardwood floors, and cobwebs lined the walls, though not to the extent of the third floor apartment. Perhaps my intel was wrong. Maybe these spaces were used regularly. That, or someone must regularly be cleaning the space on the upper levels.

  The narrow hallway on the top floor had roof access. An old rusted ladder mounted to the rear wall. I climbed it and popped the hatch to the roof. Strong gusts of wind passed by. A steady stream pelted down on me. The cold wormed its way into my clothing. I performed a quick recon of the roof's perimeter and determined there was no way off unless one was willing to risk a drop of seventy feet or so to the concrete below by attempting a ten-foot jump to the next building.

  I double-checked every room on the way down. All except Taylor's. I wasn't looking for signs of life. Instead, I wanted to root out any possible escape routes. Iron bars on the upper level windows made any attempt from there impossible. The fire escapes on the second and third floors had been removed. Heavy bolts stuck out of the wall as a reminder they had once been attached. An alley around the length and width of the Brownstone, but there was no outlet. It formed a U that originated and terminated on 4th Street.

  So that left one way in and out of the building: the front door. And once we saw Brett Taylor enter through it, that spelled game over.

  CHAPTER 3

  I SAT AT a wrought-iron bistro table, across from Bear, on the frigid and desolate terrace of a small Brooklyn café, a block east of the brownstone and two blocks west of Prospect Park. Dead leaves skated along the herringbone brick pavers, the first traffic we'd seen pass by.

  Gray clouds raced overhead. Along with them came the promise of a winter storm. The temperature had already dropped ten degrees since the high of thirty-one at 8:00 that morning. Wouldn't be long until the storm hit. I had to wonder if Bear and I would manage to get out of the city today.

  I pinched the handle of a mug that had once been hot between my thumb and forefinger. The dark roast emitted a bitter odor. Inches from my mouth, the rising steam mingled with my chilled breath. A smoky veil lifted into the air between Bear and me. I stared through it past the big man and scanned the street and sidewalk that stretched beyond the empty terrace. I took a sip. I'd waited four and a half minutes too long to do so. Might as well have been sucking on unbrewed grounds.

  Bear stared at a newspaper pinned to the table by his large hands. His laughter broke the monotony of distant traffic. I glanced down and saw him reading an op-ed piece about our involvement in Iraq.

  I decided it was a good a time as any to kill a few minutes with mind-numbing conversation, so with the mug covering my mouth, I said, "Good and evil."

  Bear's forehead wrinkled as he shifted his gaze from the paper to me without moving his head. "What about it?"

  "That's the wrong question."

  "Then what's the right question?"

  "What's the difference?"

&n
bsp; Bear shrugged, said nothing, redirected his focus to the op-ed piece.

  "The difference," I said, "is that both halves sit on a line so thin I don't believe it exists."

  Without looking up, Bear offered a half-hearted chuckle as he hiked his thumb over his shoulder toward the cop who was leaning against a light post on the opposite side of the intersection. The officer wore a ski mask with a full oval cutout for his face. This resulted in the man's nose and cheeks turning bright red. The cop brought his hands to his face, lifted the elastic bands on his gloves, and blew into them. I doubted the effect would last long.

  "Why don't you go tell Johnny Law over there about your theory?" Bear said.

  I wasn't sure how he'd spotted the cop; the man had arrived after we sat down. I resisted the urge to check the glass behind me.

  "He'd agree with me," I said. "Think about everything he's seen working in Brooklyn. It ain't Iraq, but it sure as hell isn't a theme park either."

  "Nonsense." Bear leaned forward and dropped a thick forearm on the table. Its legs creaked as my side rose up an inch or two. "Just like you learned in Sunday school as a kid, there's right and wrong and laws and consequences that most people abide by. You can say they do it blindly, or willingly, or unwillingly but out of fear of retribution. Doesn't matter. Without those laws, chaos would ensue." He tapped on the table with two fingers and added, "To me, that's a pretty thick line."

  "Yet at times, the two of us are given a pass to break those laws if it's good for the government and the welfare of those law-abiding citizens who went to Sunday school and do everything they're told. Besides, I didn't say 'right and wrong.' I said 'good and evil.' The difference between them might as well be as wide as the Grand Canyon - at that spot a half-inch or less before the two sides finally meet. According to some, and I'm talking people high up the black ops food chain, if we take out a target on a hit they sanctioned, then we did something right. Makes us good guys for doing our job. But there are others, most likely our targets' loved ones, and presumably our targets, who'd say we are the face of evil in its purest form."