THE THOUSAND DOLLAR CONTRACT: Colt Ryder Is Back In His Most Explosive Adventure Yet! Read online

  THE THOUSAND DOLLAR CONTRACT

  J.T. Brannan

  Published by Grey Arrow Publishing

  © J.T. Brannan 2016

  The right of J.T. Brannan to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First Edition

  For Justyna, Jakub and Mia;

  and my parents, for their help and support

  “About 25 years ago, I started out as a reporter covering politics. And that sort of just evolved into organized crime, because organized crime and politics were the same thing in Boston.”

  - Howie Carr

  “Landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed.”

  - Karl Marx

  Prologue

  I eyed the target through the scope, watched as the tip of the arrow moved up and down in time with my breathing, noting at what stage of my breathing cycle it rested perfectly on the middle of the target’s forehead.

  I’d never been a sniper during my time in the Rangers, but I’d been a designated marksman in the regular battalions, before joining the elite Regimental Recon Detachment. I had plenty of range time under my belt.

  Plenty of the real thing, too.

  Those old skills came back to me now, as they had been doing all afternoon. Keeping control of your breathing was key, as always; I simply had to ignore the fact that there was money riding on the outcome of this shot. Ignore the desire to prove myself too – if I thought about these things, let the stress get to me in any way, my body would tense involuntarily and I would no longer have control of my shooting.

  The target was five hundred yards out – a fair distance, but hardly difficult for a good shooter. A head shot made things trickier, but not by much.

  I breathed in; a nice, full, deep breath, watched as the sight’s post raised up off the target and stopped for a moment as the breath changed and I started to exhale. Again, it was a full, deep breath, and I observed the sight lower again, tip of the post resting on the target’s forehead. And then I repeated the cycle again – in and out, finally holding the breath on the exhale, in the dip before inhaling again. It was a natural pause that I artificially extended slightly, my trigger finger having already taken up the slack from the action.

  Just over a second into the pause, my finger depressed the trigger fully, a smooth pull that I kept holding as the bullet was violently released from the barrel; only after the round hit the target did I slowly ease off.

  Bullseye.

  Right through the target’s forehead.

  I was still controlling my breathing, too in the zone to feel any elation at my success.

  The guy next to me had no such damping on his own emotions, however.

  ‘Son of a fucking bitch!’ he shouted as he verified the shot through his field glasses.

  Still moving slowly, I placed the rifle down on the ground and got steadily to my feet, eye to eye with the guy.

  ‘How the fuck did you do that?’ he whined, and I just shrugged my shoulders as I looked down the range toward the human silhouette plywood target that I had just ‘killed’.

  ‘Practice,’ I told him as I extended my hand for the gold Rolex watch he owed me. He grudgingly unstrapped the beast from his wrist – used as collateral because I’d already cleaned him and his buddies out of their cash – and shoved it roughly into my waiting palm.

  It was true, too – practice was the answer to everything, which was why I’d been visiting this long-distance shooting range just outside of Boston in the first place.

  My ‘job’ – if you can call it that – consisted simply of traveling from town to town, city to city, all across America, helping anyone who needed me. They put out adverts for the ‘Thousand Dollar Man’ in garages, liquor stores, bus stations, supermarkets – anywhere they thought I might one day turn up, if I ever passed their way. Classifieds in the local papers were always a good source too.

  It didn’t bother me what the jobs were – as long as I wasn’t being hired explicitly to kill someone – but I charged one thousand dollars a time regardless. Sometimes the jobs were big and exciting, and other times they were dull and routine. After the last ‘big’ one, when I’d helped a woman escape from her psychotic husband – who also happened to be the local chief of police – I’d had a fairly quiet time of it for a few weeks.

  There’d been a cheating husband in Ann Arbor, a missing set of diamond jewelry in Fort Wayne, and – I’m not kidding, I swear – a lost kitten in Pittsburgh. That still cost the owners a thousand dollars, and they were happy to pay it.

  But a lot of my work involved violence, and carried the risk of serious harm; and to ensure that the harm occurred to others – and not myself – I generally spent a lot of time on my travels sharpening up on my combat skills.

  For hand-to-hand, I trained at karate and judo dojo, boxing and MMA gyms, self-defense schools and Brazilian jiujitsu academies; I’ve had great workouts from the Kronk in Detroit to Xtreme Couture in Vegas, and everything in between.

  I also attended as many shooting schools as I could find, from small indoor pistol ranges to long-range outdoor places like this one. I preferred combat-oriented schools – practical pistol and carbine ranges with interactive pop-up targets, smoke and distractions – but sometimes it was good to come to a place like this and practice the basics.

  I’d turned up earlier that afternoon and – while my half-Mastiff, half-Alsatian companion Kane lay by my side, asleep and completely disinterested – I’d brought my old skills back up to a decent level.

  Decent enough to be spotted by the low-rent shooting party firing on the six lanes next to me.

  They’d obviously been drinking, and – although most ranges would have thrown them out on the spot – it was clear that the group’s ringleader was good friends with the people who ran the place. Probably spent a lot of money here over the years, I guessed; that tended to make people friendly, in my experience.

  It hadn’t taken long for the alpha male of the group – an eighties-style yuppie douchebag called Ron – to wander over to my lane and offer some ‘friendly’ critique, which soon became a friendly challenge.

  And so for the past hour or so, we’d been trading shots at various ranges, from fifty yards all the way out to the final round at five hundred. And at every range – despite Ron’s friends trying their best to distract me with ill-timed shouts and various noisy ‘accidents’ – I’d bested him at every turn.

  So far I’d taken four hundred dollars in cash from the man, another five hundred that his friends had managed to pull together, and the gold Rolex. To say he was pissed off was something of an understatement, and I knew that a man like that would be unwilling to accept such a defeat.

  His girlfriend didn’t seem too impressed either – and I couldn’t be sure if she was more annoyed about the money he was throwing away, or the fact that she’d been left alone with Ron’s drunken friends for the past hour. Ron had probably invited her here to show her how great he was – and he might well have been better than his friends – but the plan had now backfired badly.

  I had no idea what the girl was doing with a dick like Ron anyway. She was a real looker – about five six, a hundred-pound gym bunny with long blond hair and a year-round tan. Ron, on the other hand, was a drunk little weasel. Still, he had money I supposed; and a lot of the time that was, sadly, enough.

  Although, I thought with a smile, he had rather less of it now.

&nbs
p; Ron looked at me, at his girlfriend, at his friends, then back to me, determination set

  on his face.

  ‘We go again,’ he said, before taking another swig from his stainless steel hip flask. ‘Another round.’

  I smiled. ‘I’d be happy to oblige, but what are the stakes? Looks like you’ve got nothing left. And I don’t take credit cards.’

  ‘You’re an arrogant fucker, aren’t you?’ he whispered to me. ‘But everyone has to lose some time.’

  ‘I agree,’ I told him. ‘But to be in it in the first place, you need to have something to bet. I have . . .’ I made a show of counting the money I’d won already . . . ‘nine hundred dollars and a dodgy Rolex. So what do you have?’

  ‘That Rolex is fucking genuine, you dick,’ he snapped back, but then he paused as he tried to calculate what he had left; but I knew the answer was zero. He turned to his buddies again, but they just shrugged, some looking away in embarrassment. Either they had nothing left too, or else they just didn’t think he was going to win.

  They were right about that, at least.

  ‘But what do you have now?’ I asked again, to be met only by grudging silence.

  Eventually, I heard Ron’s girlfriend sigh in exasperation. ‘Me,’ she said firmly.

  ‘What?’ Ron said incredulously, turning his head to her. ‘What the fuck do you mean?’

  ‘I mean you can bet me,’ she said petulantly. ‘You win, you get your shit back. He wins,’ she said, jerking her thumb at me, ‘he can have me.’

  I think I must have been as startled as Ron was, and we both looked at her in amazement. There were chuckles and whispered comments from Ron’s troop of buddies, who looked just as bewildered as us.

  And then, just as amazingly, Ron nodded his head in agreement. ‘Okay,’ he said to her, before turning back to me. ‘So how about it, hotshot? I win, I get everything back. You win, you get Sophie here.’

  Wow – the guy really was desperate.

  Or maybe he didn’t really like his girlfriend?

  Either way, I thought as I exchanged looks with the blond beauty across from me, there was only one answer I could give.

  ‘Done,’ I said. ‘Let’s shoot.’

  The test was simple – a single round at six hundred yards, closest to the bullseye in the center of the circular target wins.

  I’d already proven what I could do, and I wondered why Ron had picked a test he knew he would probably lose.

  That was when the manager walked out toward us, his gaze fixed on me, a long bag slung over one shoulder. ‘Guys,’ he said with a nod to Ron and his buddies, before turning back to me. ‘Hi there,’ he said apologetically. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to take your rifle back.’

  I knew where this was going immediately. Ron – or one of his friends – had called the guy and asked for his help.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘You hired it, and your time’s up.’ He looked down at his watch. ‘In fact, your time’s more than up, and I’ve got more customers lined up for it.’

  ‘I’ve just got one more round to fire.’

  With a quick glance in Ron’s direction, he shook his head vigorously. ‘No can do,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’ He unslung the bag from his shoulder and presented it to me. ‘We’re looking real busy here,’ he said, ‘but I managed to find this for you.’ The smile that played around his lips – and the big smirk on Ron’s face – told me this wasn’t going to be of much use.

  He unzipped the bag and held out the rifle that lay within. ‘It’s a real classic,’ he said. ‘World War Two era M1 Garand, I have it on display back in the shop.’

  It was a classic alright – this model was three quarters of a century old, the design for the original dating back to 1929. Still, it was a solid enough rifle, and was accurate up to five hundred yards – not quite six, but you couldn’t have everything. It only had iron sights though, which would make things at that range a bit of a problem – I didn’t even know if I’d be able to make out the target at that range without a scope.

  There was another problem too. ‘When was it last fired?’ I asked.

  The manager just shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not sure, to be honest,’ he said. ‘Battle of Iwo Jima?’

  This elicited cries of laughter from the crowd, and Ron’s shit-eating grin spread even larger across his face.

  ‘But it’s all I got,’ the manager continued. ‘You want it or not?’

  ‘I’ll take it,’ I said, handing over the modern match-grade rifle I’d been using up until then.

  The manager took it back, handed me the bag. ‘Ammunition’s in the bag,’ he said. ‘Good luck.’ Again, everyone laughed; well, everyone except Sophie, who looked at me pleadingly, as if to say please win.

  Well, I would do my best.

  ‘Can I zero it?’ I asked Ron, already knowing what his answer would be.

  ‘Sure,’ he said, to my surprise. ‘If you have enough ammo.’

  I looked in the bag, saw a clip holding a single .30-06 Springfield round nestled next to the rifle, and knew that there would be no testing of the weapon, no zeroing. I would be shooting cold, with a rifle not zeroed to me, trying to get a bullseye at six hundred yards with a weapon only rated to five hundred and which might not have even been fired since World War II.

  ‘You ready?’ Ron asked, and I nodded my head.

  ‘You first,’ I said. I wanted to see what I was dealing with, how close to the bullseye I would need to get.

  We gathered around the shooting lane, and I checked the target with a set of field glasses just to make sure the manager hadn’t pre-set the target with a hole in the bullseye. But it looked clear, and I used the time that Ron took to get his position set to examine my own rifle.

  It was clean at least, a fine example of what had been one of the US military’s main infantry weapons for decades. It had seen service against Axis forces in both the European and Pacific theaters, and was also used extensively in the Korean War; in fact, it was still being used to some extent in Vietnam.

  It seemed a good example, but I wouldn’t know for sure until I fired it. I would just have to cross my fingers and hope for the best.

  Ron was finally in position, and I watched through the field glasses, waiting for him to take the shot. ‘One round,’ I reminded him, but he ignored me, already entering the breathing cycle.

  I sensed movement behind me then, felt the pressure of a warm body against my back, a slim handed resting on my shoulder, squeezing the muscle gently.

  Sophie.

  I didn’t move, just waited, watching the target; but the warmth, the touch, reassured me, motivated me.

  And then I saw a hole appear in the target, followed instants later by the supersonic crack of the round passing through the air at two thousand miles per hour.

  It was a good shot, grazing the edge of the bullseye on the left side.

  ‘Bullseye!’ one of his friends shouted out.

  ‘Fuckin’ A!’ cried another, and then the whole party were slapping Ron on the back as his got up to his feet and gave me that horrible, self-satisfied grin.

  I felt the hand on my shoulder give another squeeze, a silent good luck, then release and move away.

  This was it.

  My turn.

  ‘Okay, my friend,’ Ron said. ‘Let’s see you beat that.’

  I handed him the field glasses. ‘Good shot,’ I said, before lying down on the shooting blanket.

  I think he may have said, ‘Fuck yeah, it was a good shot! Ha, fuck you!’, but I wasn’t really paying attention anymore; it was just me, the rifle and the target.

  I fed the clip – holding the single round – into the topside of the rifle, inserting it into the fixed internal magazine. I released my thumb and the bolt snapped forward, chambering the round and leaving the rifle ready to fire.

  So far, so good.

  I set my position, rifle butt well into my shoulder, grip firm with the right hand while the left was just us
ed as a rest for the barrel, and looked across six hundred yards of open ground to the target beyond.

  Okay, I thought, I could see it – old age hadn’t dimmed my eyesight yet. There was no detail there, but I could see the circular outline of the target against the sandy backdrop.

  I shifted my gaze, looking through the tiny aperture of the rear iron sight, matching it up with the central triangular post of the front sight, steadying my breathing as I did so.

  I calculated elevation and windage, made the necessary corrections – not knowing if they would do any good, realizing that a lot of this would rely on good fortune given the age of the rifle – and then went back to the slow, steady breathing cycle as I re-established the sight picture.

  In, out, hold, in, out, hold, in, out, hold –

  Squeeze.

  I heard the supersonic crack before the sight rested back on target, perfectly centered.

  I had no idea if I’d hit anything, but there were immediate groans and gasps of disbelief from the people around me, a squeal of delight from Sophie, and I leapt to my feet and grabbed the field glasses off a stunned, open-mouthed Ron, the grin gone forever now from his face.

  I looked, focused the lenses, and smiled.

  Not a perfect bullseye – it was slightly to the right of true center – but my round had pierced the target fully within the central circle, while Ron’s had grazed the edge.

  Win for Mr. Ryder.

  I turned to Ron with a grin of my own.

  ‘Looks like I get to keep everything,’ I said.

  Ron could barely speak, boiling over with fury – which wasn’t helped when Sophie strolled right past him and into my arms.

  I saw the spark then, knew he was going to do something he would regret even before he did – and as he raised his rifle toward me, I was already moving, pushing Sophie to one side and covering the distance between us in the blink of an eye.

  The thumb of my right hand, bunched tight against the knuckles of my fingers, jabbed hard into Ron’s throat, and I saw the man’s eyes roll up into his head, heard the savage gasp for breath as he fell to the floor, helpless, clutching at his neck as his legs whipped around on the floor.