The Warrior's Debt: Warriors Series, #4

By Ty Patterson

KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE

Zeb Carter hunts down killers who are targeting his friends and in the concrete jungle of New York, finds that the real danger might be closer than he thought it was.

And nothing is as it seems.

The Warrior's Debt is the fourth thriller in the Warriors Series. Each novel can be read stand-alone.

With its shocking twists, breakneck pace and rollercoaster thrills, The Warrior's Debt has Ty Patterson's signature storytelling that has won fans all over the world. 

If you like Lee Child, Vince Flynn and David Baldacci, you'll love Ty Patterson.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ty Patterson
• Release date: Mar 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781507052983

Book preview

Chapter One

Lester Benjamin didn’t know he was going to die in less than forty-eight hours.

Lester started his day early, like any other day. He rolled the shutters up on his convenience store on Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn at five in the morning, turned on its lights, and started his morning routine.

It was late October, leaf fall was well under way and the tree in front of his store had covered the sidewalk with its foliage. He brought a broom out, swept the sidewalk clean, and nodded silently at the few joggers and dog walkers who were up that early.

He looked at the pavement critically for a moment and then turned to go inside the store where he turned on all the lights and the heating. He allowed himself a moment of pride as he surveyed his store; neatly-lined shelves offering everything that residents could conceivably need looked back at him with approval.

Lester went down the central aisle, pushed a side door open into the restroom, washed his hands and patted his hair down with his fingers. He was tall; an inch over six feet, and his ebony colored face with a thick shock of silver hair filled the mirror.

He squelched the pride.

Hard work. That alone had brought him to where he was today.

Lester’s journey had started six decades back in a small village in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and whenever he felt the oncoming of self-pity, he reminded himself from where he had come.

He owned the store and the one-bedroom apartment above it.

‘Thank you, Lord,’ he whispered and returned back to the counter.

At six, his two assistants, Joe and Emilio, strolled in. The two of them, in their late twenties, were just out of college and helped out in the store. He high-fived the two of them and they got the store ready for business.

The day went by soon enough for Lester, the convenience store was the only one within a few blocks and got steady traffic throughout the day. Many of his customers were regulars who he knew by name and he always greeted them warmly. It was only a convenience store, but it was his store and he firmly believed that the personal touch made a difference to his customers.

Joe and Emilio helped him wind up in the evening and at nine, they rolled the shutters down and silence fell over their share of Myrtle Avenue.

Lester walked two doors down, climbed a short flight of stairs and entered his still apartment.

He took a shower, broke open a can of soup, heated it, and had his dinner.

A few slices of bread and a bowl of soup.

He sat by the window for a while and watched the occasional car whoosh by below as it turned the street momentarily gold, before darkness claimed it back.

The faint hum of tires and the play of gold and black lulled him to sleep as he sat by the window.

Lester woke earlier than usual the next day.

It was that day in the week.

He showered and hit the avenue forty minutes after waking up and a brisk walk took him to the subway station on Classon Avenue and Lafayette. Fifteen minutes later, he boarded the Brooklyn Queens Crosstown, and one change later he joined commuters in a steel MTA train as it rocked its way to Manhattan.

Two hours from the time he’d left home, just as the sun made a determined bid to pierce the cloud overhang, Lester entered Central Park and walked rapidly to a runner’s track. Runners, joggers, dog walkers, and cyclists, the park already had traffic and it was just seven in the morning.

Lester moved deep inside the park to a secluded track that only serious runners knew of and went to his hiding place. It was a deep copse, in plain view of the track ten feet away, but so thick that runners couldn’t see beyond the immediate foliage.

Lester checked his watch.

Seven thirty.

And there she was.

She was wearing a dark track suit, a Columbia Business School hoodie, and her dark pony tail bobbed as she ran evenly.

A ray of sunlight escaped the leafy shade overhead and her chocolate skin glowed briefly. Lester drank her in, her dark eyes, her features, her even stride and his heart swelled.

Alisha Jones. That was her name.

She was his daughter. She didn’t know he existed.

One day she would inherit his convenience store and his apartment.

Lester would die with that thought in his mind.

---

The killer knew Lester’s routine.

The killer knew all about routines and patterns and profiles and Lester didn’t fit his previous victims’ profiles. That was good. What was even better was that Lester lived alone, no one to raise the alarm if he didn’t return home.

He followed Lester and learned his routine and waited for the right time.

There had been several opportunities to take the African American man, but the thing in him was not ready then. He would know when the time was right. The man was bigger than him, taller by half a foot and heavier by a few pounds. Despite his sixty odd years, the man was fit, but the killer was confident he could take him.

His earlier kills had been messy, he was still learning, and this time he was determined to make it a clean kill.

He followed the man easily and marveled at the stupidity of people that they never bothered to check their backs. He took the subway along with him; at one point he could have reached out and touched the man, but the killer had learned to cloak himself in invisibility. He was just another commuter on the train.

He followed Lester to Central Park, knew what he was there for, and just as the woman jogged past, he struck.

---

Lester’s body was found the next day by a jogger and the NYPD swung into action. They got his identity from the New York State driver’s license in his wallet, calls were made and eventually they got hold of Joe and Emilio.

They were both shocked and Joe shed tears in the privacy of the restroom. Lester had been more than an employer, he had been a friend. They told the cops that Lester didn’t seem to have any relatives or friends that they knew of. The store and his apartment were his world.

The cops searched his apartment, found two names with numbers, and two calls were made.

One was to Alisha Jones.

The other was to another sixty-year-old African American, in Tennessee. The man lay on his bed for a while after hanging up, and then slowly eased up.

His son heard his stirring, heard his end of the call, and rushed to his room.

He brushed his son’s help away, stood upright, breathed deeply, and regarded his son.

His son was huge, six foot four, all of it hard muscle. He had close-cropped hair, piercing eyes, and an air of stillness that concealed a capacity for enormous violence.

He told his son what had happened and watched his eyes darken.

He held a hand up to stop him.

‘This isn’t something for you. I’m sure the cops will investigate.’

He looked steadily at his son, waited for an acknowledgement and when his son nodded once, he sighed deeply and lay down again.

His son left the room and went outside their house. It was a small single family home in Arlington; his father lived alone and once his wife had passed away, he’d moved to a smaller home.

The son stood on the front lawn, closed his eyes, and felt the sunlight beat down on him.

Decision reached, he opened his eyes and nodded at the next door neighbor.

He knew how important Lester had been to his father.

Bwana Kayembe, deep black, ex-special forces operative, thumbed his phone.

His father had asked him not to get involved.

He wouldn’t.

He called his friend in New York, his friend who was also his boss.

Zeb Carter.

Chapter Two

Zeb didn’t take the call.

Zeb was in Turkey, sitting two feet away from Pasha Alekseevich, the biggest illegal arms dealer in Russia.

Pasha dealt in large and exotic weaponry, like submarines, drones, tanks, aircraft, anything that a dictator would need, or for that matter, a terrorist organization.

Pasha wasn’t particular who he did business with, so long as they paid.

The terrorism trade had been a recent move for Pasha and he’d found that he earned much more trading with them than with his regular customers. Pasha had expanded his offering – he kept up with the lingo – to include nuclear and chemical weapons.

This was why Zeb was meeting him.

---

Zeb Carter, ex-Special Forces operative, worked for a U.S. government agency that didn’t exist. He undertook missions that never came to light.

Clare, his boss, had set up the agency to take on exothermic missions – their term for extremely high risk, high threat, and deniable missions – ones that no other Special Ops or deep black agencies in the country’s defense and intelligence arena could or would undertake.

Clare was the first female director of the agency and held the nebulous title of Director of Strategy. She reported only to the President.

When she’d taken on the role, she’d overhauled the agency to make it smaller, with the smallest possible administration footprint. It was completely deniable and had the best operatives available.

The agency worked with handpicked private military contractors whose first allegiance was to the agency. They could take on other assignments when they weren’t on agency business, so long as those assignments didn’t conflict with the national interest or jeopardize any agency mission.

This structure was conceived one evening when she’d gone for a drink with her closest friend, Cassandra, in downtown Washington. D.C.

Cassandra and Clare had studied together at Bryn Mawr and both had ended up working in the political jungle that was Washington D.C.

Cassandra had started her career as a Foreign Service specialist in the State Department and had ended up being the aide to the Secretary of State, before retiring from politics and pursuing a career in academics. Clare had started her career at the Agency as an analyst.

During the evening, Clare saw a man waiting outside their bar, a man who seemed to become part of the street, around whom pedestrian traffic bent itself and flowed. Cassandra saw Clare’s glance, and laughed. ‘That’s my superhero brother, Zeb, waiting for me.’

She explained when she saw Clare’s raised eyebrows. ‘Zeb was Special Forces. He’s now a private military contractor, does security consulting, and he wouldn’t like me mentioning anything more.’ She laughed again, when she realized how ridiculous that sounded. Clare had the highest security clearances in the country.

An intrigued Clare pulled Zeb’s file, whistled at the clearances required, and sobered when she read the contents of the file. She asked around discreetly and heard that he worked by his own rules. He had a tight moral code that meant he did not wage war on women or children and did not accept any assignments that went against the country’s interests.

She asked him to join the agency the next day.

Zeb refused and counter proposed that he form a team of elite operatives that the agency could call on. This gave the agency the near-zero footprint and deniability that Clare wanted. She mulled over it only for a few moments, before green lighting it, trusting in Zeb’s judgment to pick operatives who had a similar code to his.

The agency was born.

The other members in Zeb’s team, in addition to Bwana and Broker, were Roger, Chloe, and Bear. All of them were New York based. All of them former Special Forces, except Broker who had been a Ranger, and Chloe who had served in the 82nd Airborne. Broker was their intelligence analyst and their logistics man. He ran a successful private intelligence business that catered to multinational corporations. All of them were in their mid- thirties, except Broker, who was the oldest. He was in his early forties, but with his shaggy blond hair grown to shoulder length, his fitness level and his immaculate style, he often passed for a decade younger.

On one of the agency’s missions they had rescued the daughter of high-ranking Middle Eastern royal. A grateful father had presented a check to Clare, a check that had many zeros on it. She had handed the check back to him with a smile. The agency didn’t take rewards.

The royal added two more zeros and pushed the check back at her.

‘My daughter is my life.’ He said simply.

Clare handed the check to Zeb and Broker, shrugged when they stared blankly at her.

‘It’s yours. Do with it what you wish.’

The five of them became enormously wealthy, but they’d never worked for the agency for the money.

Zeb was their team leader and Broker was the second in command. They didn’t have ranks. They were all equals, a tight knit team that was more a family.

The President had once, in jest, referred to their team as Clare’s Warriors.

The name stuck.

---

Zeb was meeting the Russian arms dealer as a buyer for a terrorist organization.

He had perfected the cover for more than a year. He had danced an elaborate tango with the Russian to build authenticity and credibility and then had finally agreed to the meeting. The Russian was suspicious of any new customers and went through a security protocol that included meeting his buyers.

Zeb was a shade over six feet, brown eyed, brown hair cut short; he was lean and lithe. For the cover he had dyed his hair black, grown it an inch longer and sported a thin moustache. He wore a light shirt over dark slacks, carried an attaché and looked like a million other Middle Eastern businessmen.

The meeting was in a crowded café on Istiklal Caddesi, the busiest avenue in Istanbul; Pasha had changed locations three times at the last minute and Zeb had changed it once. He didn’t want to seem eager to meet the Russian.

The café was flanked by Ottoman era buildings and any other time, Zeb would have soaked in the history.

Pasha’s men were easy to spot in the café. They were hulking in chairs not big enough to take their size, looked balefully around the café, and sported bulges under their coats. One of them patted Zeb down and another ran a scanner on him. Zeb looked at the other patrons in the café; none of them batted an eyelid.

Pasha himself was slim and neatly dressed in a Western suit of a dark color. His hair was dark with lighter streaks and his grey eyes regarded Zeb coldly. He had done extensive checks on Zeb, his henchmen had made reference calls, and everything pointed to Zeb being the real deal.

But he was suspicious. It paid to be so in his job.

‘Why did you meet me?’ He asked in fluent Arabic.

Something inside Zeb stilled.

Dossiers on the arms dealer were as thick as telephone directories, but not one of them had mentioned the Russian’s knowledge of Arabic.

‘You requested this meeting, not I.’ Zeb replied in the same tongue. He had spent more years undercover in the Middle East than he cared to remember, the language came back to him easily.

Pasha regarded him with hooded eyes. ‘The drones I can get. The other stuff will take time.’

Zeb tapped his fingers impatiently. ‘My masters want things done tomorrow. When I first approached you, you said everything could be supplied in a month. It’s three months now and I still haven’t got anything that I wanted.’

Pasha was smooth. ‘This is not like a market where you order at a counter. These things take time. The other items on your shopping list have to be handled delicately.’

To their knowledge, Pasha hadn’t sold nuclear and chemical weapons before. When Zeb’s agency learned that he was in the market to sell those, they had acted swiftly.

Zeb looked around the café. It was crowded at lunch hour and this drowned out their voices.

‘The other items – we aren’t paying for anything that’s more than five years old.’

A think smile spread across the Russian’s face. ‘They’re new. You’ll not get them anywhere else. You would not be here if you could.’

Zeb signaled the waiter and Pasha tensed. His henchmen surged forward in their seats.

Zeb looked at the man contemptuously.

‘You jerk me around all over town just so that you can find a café which is secure. And when you come here, you order nothing? That won’t be remembered? I expected better tradecraft from you. Maybe you’re just a big mouth.’

Pasha’s face darkened but held back his retort as the waiter arrived. He ordered tea for both of them without asking Zeb’s preference.

He glared at Zeb and when the waiter arrived, reached out a hand to grab his cup.

He grabbed air.

Zeb switched around the cups, pushed his toward Pasha.

‘You selected this place. You might own it. You drink from that cup and I’ll drink from yours.’

Pasha’s henchmen looked on shocked.

Pasha’s face reddened and suddenly he relaxed and laughed. ‘You’ve got nerve haven’t you? No wonder your organization sent you to do the dealing.’

He sipped noisily and regarded the buyer opposite him in silence.

Curiosity laced his voice when he broke it. ‘My men could capture you, torture you and get the codes for the money. You thought about that?’

Zeb held out his hand, raised a finger. ‘I don’t have all the codes. Even if you captured me, you wouldn’t get the money. You’ve been in business long enough. You should know that.’

A second finger went up, his eyes became hard. ‘If you even touched me, you would be hunted by my organization, beheaded, and we would make the video public. You are not safe, just because you are in Moscow.’

Zeb stood up suddenly before Pasha could react. ‘Let me know when you have my shopping list. I want to see proof that they’re actually with you.’

He gripped the man’s hand briefly and walked out without a backward glance.

He walked swiftly for fifteen minutes, made random turns and finally flagged a passing cab. He changed three more cabs before he headed to Istanbul Hezarfen airport, a private airport, where he boarded a Cessna Citation X.

Three hours later he was in a private airfield outside London and five hours later he was in their Learjet, crossing the Atlantic.

---

The Russian’s move into nuclear and chemical weapons had sprung several U.S. and international agencies into action. They had tried to track him and take him out several times, but all the attempts had failed the security blanket Pasha had around him.

In desperation they had turned to Clare who had pushed Pasha’s file to Zeb.

Zeb came up with the idea of going undercover as an arms buyer and Broker came up with the missing piece.

‘Slow acting poison in his drink or food; something that kills over a few days. That will give us enough time to track his movements and find out who and where his source is. Pasha will be dead after that.’

Zeb looked at him doubtfully. ‘We can place a man on Moon; send drones out to kill remotely. Poison is what you come up with for Pasha?’

‘You got a better idea?’

Zeb didn’t.

Broker said he was going away for a few days to talk to his friends at the NSA and when Zeb made to accompany him, looked at him pityingly. ‘You can’t even use a smart phone. This would be beyond you.’

He came back with a pouch of clear liquid. ‘This is odorless and tasteless and results in a natural-looking death.’

‘What is it?’

‘Some extract from a rare plant in South America that has been refined by our friends.’

Will have to be sleight of hand.

He couldn’t resist asking Broker. ‘So the plan is for me to sit in front of Pasha, stick this in whatever he’s having and come away alive?

‘Yeah.’ He gave an innocent look to Zeb. ‘But you can do it. You have enough time to figure out how. After all, you’ve come back from the dead. This’s a piece of cake.’

---

In an earlier mission, Zeb and Broker had rescued the wife and son of a prominent national journalist from a rogue mercenary in New York. In the rescue, Zeb had been critically injured. He’d been declared dead by Clare at his insistence. A dead Zeb would no longer be a magnet for trouble and endanger those in his orbit. Even his team believed he was dead.

He’d continued to work with Clare under a new identity, but a new mission which threatened his friends had changed that. He’d come back to life to rescue them when they’d taken on a ruthless criminal gang in New York.

They never let him forget his duplicity.

Zeb went to the lavatory, stripped and scrubbed himself thoroughly using a wash Broker had given him. When he’d finished, his brown eyes and dark hair once again looked back at him.

He picked up his satellite phone and saw several missed calls from Broker.

‘This is no longer our baby,’ Broker shouted. He rarely spoke in a normal voice over phones. ‘Clare will hand this over to other agencies. When are you wheels-down?’

Zeb told him and glanced at the phone when there wasn’t a response from Broker.

Broker finally spoke. ‘Bwana called you? He said he’d been trying to get to you.’

Zeb looked at the messages on his phone. ‘Yeah, but I couldn’t take them. What’s he saying?’

Broker told him.

---

Several years back, he had been in Broker’s Columbus Avenue office, doing the stuff he hated the most, writing reports. The team was new, the office was new, and working with Clare was new. Zeb hadn’t realized the paperwork that came with ops, even for a deep black agency such as theirs.

He looked up as a man entered the room.

The African American was tall, broad and had a bearing to him that attracted attention. He walked slowly, favoring one leg over the other, his silver hair caught the sun and sparked to life.

Zeb rose from his desk, walked around it, and watched him. He didn’t get any vibe from the man, nothing pinged his radar, he kept silent. Let him make the move.

The man glanced briefly at Zeb, stood in the center of the room and surveyed the office. His gaze settled on the one photograph adorning the wall. Zeb’s team. All of them were smiling, Broker had pulled a silly face. All of them smiling, but for Zeb.

The man went closer to the photograph and looked at it. He turned around