Page 172 of The Fourth Option
“I am going to do a little background first. Let LSP know we want all locational data on that Eagle.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Strickland.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Keep it tight.”
Bates disconnected his call and looked around. No one seemed to be paying extra attention to him.
He slid his phone into his pocket and extracted his burner. It was time to call the Afghan.
He dialed a memorized number. On the fifth ring a man answered.
“Salaam.”Hello.
“It’s me.”
“I know who it is.”The Pashto accent was heavy and guttural.
“That job I mentioned earlier, are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“I’m getting a location. It might be a ways outside of town. Stay by the phone.”
“Khoda Hafez.”God protect you.
Bates disconnected the phone and stared at the burner.
Zarak Fazli. Bates had questioned him in the aftermath of the 2025 New Orleans terrorist attack. He and a group of Afghans who were resettled in New Orleans and Baton Rouge after the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 were approached by law enforcement in the wake of the Bourbon Street event. Fazli was different. Bates had recognized a weakness and seen an opportunity. Fazli was having trouble with his special immigrant visa, even all these years later, due to the sensitive nature of his work for the U.S. government. Finding new work in this country was difficult. Bates had pressed and promised to help. Eventually Fazli had confided to the lieutenant that he had been part of a Zero Unit. When Bates pressed further, he discovered that the Zero Units worked for the CIA. Fazli had skills, skills useful to a man like Bates.
He dropped the burner phone back into his pocket and debated returning to the bar to work his magic on the two women he had spotted earlier, but his mind was not in that game, it was in another. He briefly wondered if Fazli and Walker may have known each other, and if so, would that make it easier or harder for Fazli to kill him?
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
Jean Lafitte Nature Preserve, Louisiana
WALKER’S DRIVE OUTof the city had felt like slipping through layers of time, leaving behind the neon pulse of the French Quarter for the shadowed stillness of the bayou. He kept one eye on the rearview mirror the entire way, watching for tails, police helicopters, and drones.
The Travois cabin sat at the end of a gravel lane in a quiet bend of Bayou des Familles, surrounded by cypress and live oaks that leaned over the water like sentinels. The inlet was narrow, the water black and still, broken only by the occasional ripple of a frog or the distant slap of a fish. Technically, it was part of a neighborhood of vacation homes, but the trees and water had long since isolated each property into its own world.
The cabin itself was rustic, built in the 1950s by Alexandre as a retreat from the city. Weathered wood shingles, a screened porch, and a boat shed with a sloped tin roof turned to rust. Inside, the walls were lined with yellowed maps, faded photographs, and shelves of field guides. An old hand-crank telephone from the turn of the previous century was attached to a wall. Under the mattress he found a Browning Auto-5 shotgun that was probably over a hundred years old. The five rounds of double aught made Walker think that Alexandre kept it handy for more than just birds. He found Alexandre’s tools in the shed, rusted but serviceable. He would need them if he had any hope of repairing the old swamp boat that sat on a trailer covered in tarps.
He spent the night on a creaky hospital bed in the back room, the windows open for airflow and so that Walker could hear the noise of an approaching vehicle. The frogs croaked in the inlet beyond the screens, and the air smelled of damp earth and dusty linens. He woke at every rustle.
By morning, he was sitting in front of Gloria’s Royal De Luxe typewriter. The pieces were there but parts were still missing. Derek Matheson and Genyra Pharmaceuticals, Fulgencio Vargas, Dorado Freight,Nectar Corporation, Cornelius Bates’s COPE Unit, and Irene Isaacson. This was big business.
Would Matheson and Bates be at Isaacson’s event at the Shaw Center for the Arts in Baton Rouge?
Are you judge, jury, and executioner?
There had been a change in his tactics, one he had been ignoring, but in the solitude of the swamp he had to confront it. He had no choice at the Staubs’ home or at the trap house in the Ninth, his first visit to Dorado Freight or with Dupuis. Those kills had been righteous. What about Gormley and Kimbel?
Did you have to kill them?
It was justice.
