Page 9 of Savage Reckoning

I estimate maybe sixty men and an arsenal sufficient to invade a third-world state. In fact, some of the weaponry looks as though it may have recently been used for just that purpose. I take in the usual collection of semi-automatics and handguns, but also crates containing rocket launchers, grenades, and incendiary devices.

“Preparing for war, I see.” I make my observation to a tall, dark-haired man standing alongside Jack Morgan. “Just my sort of party.”

“You’re the guy from Belarus,” he growls. “Heard about your little intervention there.”

“Gabe Sawyer,” I confirm.

“Tony Haigh,” he replies. “How the fuck is this your fight?”

“Maybe I just like taking down the bad guys.”

He eyes me with suspicion. “We are the bad guys.”

I shrug. “All things are relative.”

“You police or FBI or something?”

“Or something,” I concede, just as Jack calls the gathering to order by rapping the butt of his Glock on an upright girder alongside him.

We all fall silent.

“Thanks for getting here so quickly,” he starts. “I know some of you have come a long way.”

There’s a general muttering of agreement.

A voice from somewhere close to the back of the crowd chimes up with, “Well, it’s the boss…”

“True enough,” Jack agrees.

He goes on to give the latest update on the casualties, to a chorus of obscenities, grimaces, and headshaking. It’s clear that there’s not a man here who isn’t prepared to die to avenge the injury inflicted upon the Savage hierarchy. Again, I’m impressed. There was no such groundswell of outrage to greet the untimely passing of Fedor Morozov, and Ethan Savage isn’t even dead.

“Right. What do we have so far?” Jack’s question is directed to no one in particular, though his arctic-blue gaze falls upon Tony.

“The crash investigators have sent for explosives experts, so we can assume they’ve found evidence of the missile,” Tony informs the group. “Nothing yet on who might have fired it.”

“I reckon that’s our department,” Jack replies. “Casey?”

A slim woman in over-sized glasses steps forward, a laptop under her arm. I’ve done my research and I know this to be Casey Savage, sister to Ethan and Aaron and a renowned computer hacker. She sets her laptop on a metal workbench and fires it up.

“I pinpointed the likely vicinity for the launch site based on Magda’s coordinates at the time of both impacts and her account of the direction the missiles came from. Assuming you can’t just set up a rocket launching site in your back garden and start taking pot shots at passing aircraft without anyone noticing, I then went on to listen in on social media traffic for the two hours immediately before and after the attack. I turned up plenty of reports of strange noises, fireworks going off in the middle of the day, that sort of thing, and managed to narrow it all down to an area about one and a half miles square, approximately twenty miles away from the crash site. Jed has a team there now. They’re posing as TV news reporters chasing up reports of antisocial behaviour and sniffing out witnesses.”

“Who’s Jed?” I ask Tony under my breath.

“Jed O’Neill. Casey’s husband. He’s head of the Irish Mob.”

“An ally, then?”

“Fuck, yes.”

Jack nods appreciatively in response to Casey’s report. “Keep me in the loop. If anyone saw anything, we want to get to them before the police do.”

“Got that.” Casey continues. “I’ve also set up scans to monitor all global arms traffic for the last year. I’m assuming that whoever did this has been shopping recently, since they’re unlikely to have had this sort of gear stockpiled and no one know about it. If I can find out who’s been purchasing missiles and the capability to launch them, or even just making enquiries, we may have our man.”

“Or woman,” Jack suggests, “But yes, good logic.”

She closes up her computer. “There’s a lot of data to trawl through, and it may take a day or so.”

“As quick as you can, Casey. Anything else before we move on to the other matter we need to address?”

---