[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/kp75986.png?1[/img][/center] [b]Baltimore Sixteen Months Ago[/b] Tresser cracked his knuckles and settled back into the seat of his car. Six hours into the stakeout and it looked like he was in for a long haul. The house he was sitting on was a dump, a scorched husk of a rowhouse on the Baltimore west side that someone torched years ago. It was the perfect place for squatters and people trying to lay low. According to Jimmy Kappas, Little Roy Lewis was inside the house. Little Roy was one of the many dealers on Kappas’ package. The Greek sold coke, dope, and weed wholesale for a percentage of the package. The money Little Roy was kicking up to Kappas had gotten smaller and smaller until finally Little Roy stopped paying altogether. Word was that Little Roy was getting high on his own supply. If that was the case, Kappas wanted Tresser to eliminate Little Roy and whoever was in the house and get back what was his. He waited until nearly forty thirty in the morning before he made his move. That was how he’d learned it when he was with DEVGRU and the Activity. KGB time, they called it. The old Soviet secret police always committed their arrests and assassinations between four and five in the morning. It was the sweet spot where night was beginning to fade away, but morning was still not quite there yet. Even most night owls were soundly asleep by four in the morning. Tresser slipped on a pair of black nitrile gloves and carried a Beretta with a suppressor attached to the end under his coat. He looped around the back of the building and came through a broken window, slow and quietly. Tresser pulled the gun out along with a flashlight covered in tape, emitting only a pin-sized light to use as a guide. He held his breath when he passed by three buckets that had been used as latrines. It took him ten minutes to find their stash tucked away in a baseboard near the fireplace. About half a pound of heroin wrapped in cellophane nestled inside a gymbag. Alongside the stash, Tresser found nearly twenty thousand in tens, twenties, and hundred dollar bills, and four machine pistols. He tucked the money, dope, and guns into the satchel and slung it over his shoulder. He slowly glided up the rickety stairs like a ghost. Muscle memory kicked in when he reached the landing where the crew was sleeping. Check the corners, clear the rooms, plan your escape, kill as soon as you have eyes on the target. Flashbacks went through his mind, killing a Somali pirate with a sniper rifle, garroting an Al-Qaeda cutout in Iraq. Tresser didn’t believe in the stereotype of born killers, but he was a killer now thanks to Uncle Sam. Like a chunk of coal, the government had applied pressure and polished him up to turn him into a sparkly diamond of murderous potential. Three guys were passed out on piss-stained mattresses. He kept the flashlight beam low and was able to make out Little Roy in the dim light. His target acquired, he aimed. Recoil shot up his elbow as he fired off three quick shots. The rounds hissed through the room, three bullets exploding the three men's heads. He fired off three more to each man's heart to be sure he was dead before he started down the stairs. He was on the first floor when his phone started to vibrate. Tresser reached into his jacket and pulled it out. The screen said that a blocked number was attempting to call him. “Hello?” “Good morning, Mr. Tresser,” the voice on the other end of the line spoke with an accent Tresser couldn’t place. It sounded like Eastern European. “There are men outside waiting for you. They intend to kill you. They will be inside this house in thirty seconds. Goodbye.” The line went dead. Tresser looked at the screen in confusion before he put the phone back and quickly but quietly walked towards the rowhouse window. He cursed softly when he saw a car that wasn’t there before, parked in front of his own and blocking his escape. Four men he recognized as Jimmy Kappas’ muscle were stepping out of the car with guns in their hand. Tresser retreated back into the house and attempted to get his bearings. He heard footsteps approaching. They didn’t care about stealth. They had numbers on the side. Tresser leaned against the wall and listened to the front door opening from down the hall. It creaked on rusty hinges as it came open. He prepared by getting into a shooter stance as the men sent to kill him started to fan out through the house. [hr] [b]Hub City Now[/b] Tresser kept a hand pressed against his right side as he leaned against the concrete wall of the building. He felt blood slowly oozing out the wounds on his torso. The bullet had only just clipped his side, but they had gone deep enough into the skin that it would take a while to clot and stop bleeding on its own. He’d run out of the diner during the chaos of Broker’s shooting and tried as best he could to put some distance between the two of them. Now he was resting against a wall in a side alley a few blocks away from the diner. Tresser looked down at the ground by his feet and noticed that there was a steady blood trail leading down the alley towards where he had been. Tresser cursed when he saw Broker appear at the mouth of the alley with a gun in his hand. Somewhere far off was a police siren slowly getting closer. Broker raised the gun as Tresser disappeared deeper down the alley. Tresser felt something whiz by his head just before the heard the crack of the gun. He took a right and disappeared out of Broker’s line of sight just as another bullet ricocheted off the brick wall. The stabbing pain from the wound limited his running ability, but he still managed to exit out the alley before Broker could turn the corner and take another potshot at him. This being downtown Hub City, Tresser knew hiding in an abandoned building would be his best bet. He had his pick of the litter on this particular street. An old movie theater was right across the alley from him, the dilapidated marquee still advertising “DOC SAVAGE LIVES” in faded letters. Tresser forced his way in through the rusty fire exit door and disappeared inside. [hr] [b]Baltimore Sixteen Months Ago[/b] Joe Burke watched Terry McNeil as the younger detective stood in the rowhouse living room. They weren’t the only detectives on scene at the moment. Crime techs were upstairs collecting evidence while patrolmen worked on keeping people away and canvassing the scene. The white shirts were here too. The western district nightshift commander was ostensibly the highest ranking on-duty official here, but his boss, the real western commander, and a few majors and colonels from downtown had joined him. Seven dead bodies was a redball, and when it came to redballs every member of the BPD command wanted their fingers in the pie. The brass were all collecting in a command tent outside the house, drinking coffee and figuring out who best to pin this on if things went sideways, while Burke and McNeil did the real work. “I think this was one guy,” McNeil said after minutes of silent thought. “Explain yourself, son,” grunted Burke. He sounded gruff, but he was doing his best to hide the grin he wanted to show. McNeil began to point upwards to the second floor where three bodies had been found after finding the first round of four. “Guys up top were sleeping when they got their tickets punched. No signs of struggle or restraints. Doer probably used a silencer and took them all out without them knowing. He gets down here and all hell breaks loose.” Burke followed behind McNeil as he walked into the kitchen. A dead man was slouched against the kitchen counter with his neck at a twisted angle. “The kitchen is the furthest room from the living room and doesn’t have direct line of sight on the door. I bet the doer hid in here while these four guys came into the house and fanned out. Looks like when one of them came in, our guy got the drop on him and smashed his neck against the edge of the counter. Minimal noise and one of them is dead.” Burke didn’t interrupt as he followed McNeil down the hall into an empty bedroom. Another dead man was on the floor with a pool of blood underneath his neck and face. McNeil crouched and gingerly adjusted the man’s head to show Burke the discreet little slashes on the man’s neck and shoulder. “The cut to the throat stuns and silences the victim, the one here on the shoulder? That’s the brachial artery. If it’s executed like this, perfectly, the victim bleeds out in less than five minutes. Our guy pulled the move off and pinned him to the floor while he bled out. Two dead.” Burke stifled a laugh as they moved further down the hall to the bathroom where the bathroom door had been blasted off its hinges. Here was a two-for-one special. A body with a bullet hole in its head rested against the bathroom tiles. Just outside the bathroom was another body, this one with its face blown off and a shotgun on the ground beside it. “This one seems obvious enough,” said McNeil. “Our guy pops the guy in the bathroom in the back of the head, not giving a fuck about noise now that the odds are even, and steals his shotgun. He closes the door and sits on the can. As soon as he sees the doorknob move, he lets loose with the shottie and blows number four away. He drops the shotgun to the ground and calmly walks out the house. Minimal noise and gunfire, something nobody in this neighborhood is going to bat an eye at anyway.” “Brilliant,” Burke said with a smirk. “If it’s all true, that is.” “A working theory at best,” McNeil said with a shrug. “That move you mentioned earlier?” Burke asked. “The one with the cut to the throat and shoulder? They call it sticking the bleeders.” “I know," McNeil said as he looked at his partner. "It’s textbook special forces.” They let the implications hang in the air between them. Seven dead bodies. If this was the work of Tresser, which it may very well have been, then were they at least partially responsible? They had the son of a bitch in an interrogation room downtown and let him walk right out. There was no doubt in either detective’s minds that the four men on the first floor, and even those on the second floor, were anything other than criminals and lowlifes who had courted their violent deaths in some fashion. Still… the blood of seven people may have been on their hands because they didn’t just arrest Tresser then and there. Burke’s cellphone chirping drew their attention away from their potential guilt. He pulled it out and looked at the text message on his screen. “Shit,” he muttered under his breath before looking up at McNeil. “Rick and Dana are over on the east side with the fire department and the arson unit. Someone burnt Jimmy Kappas’ club to the ground. Looks like there's remains of at least three people in the wreckage.” “Fuck,” said McNeil. He pulled out his own phone and called the BPD communications section. “This is Terry McNeil, BPD Homicide badge number 9819, we need an all points bulletin and BOLO on a Thomas Tresser, white male, approximately thirty years of age. Height and weight….” [hr] [b]Hub City Now[/b] Tresser could hear footsteps somewhere nearby. He was huddled down near one of the few rows of movie seats that had not been ripped out and stolen. He still kept one hand on his wound, the other cradling a jagged shard of glass he’d picked up on his way through the lobby. Agent Mike Stevenson had once been a highly decorated SHIELD operator. Even if thirty years had elapsed, Tresser knew enough of that training remained to make Broker lethal in hand to hand combat. That training, plus his own wounds, meant that his window would be narrow. A creaking floorboard perked up Tresser’s ears. He could hear breathing somewhere close. He had taken a deep breath and breathed out slowly from his mouth to avoid making any more noise. A ruffle of fabric against a chair told him Broker was just one row away. Tresser popped up and let his training go to work. Broker was standing at Tresser’s eleven o’clock and facing away from him, but he saw movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to look. That was when Tresser struck out. The glass slit a neat, little horizontal line across Broker’s windpipe. He let out a bloody gasp and squeezed the trigger of the gun. The barrel of the gun erupted by Tresser’s right ear as he leaped over the seat and sliced Broker’s brachial artery on his shoulder. With his ears ringing, Tresser slapped the gun from Broker’s hand and slammed him to the ground. The older man wheezed as blood poured from his shoulder and coated the already soiled carpets with thick crimson. Tresser pinned him to the ground with his knees and held on as he thrashed and tried to find some purchase to pull Tresser off of him. After a minute, he slowed and continued to slow until he was completely still. Tresser stayed on top of the dying man. He reached out and grabbed Broker’s gun off the floor. He put the barrel to the back of Broker’s head and pulled the trigger.