The Witnesses

by James Patterson

  He hangs up the phone, goes back to the protocol section. If he doesn’t hear back from the Big Man within the hour, he is to dispatch a federal police unit to the Big Man’s house and physically make the notification.

  Then Williams looks up at the monitors.

  CNN, MSNBC, and now Fox and some of the international cable stations are all broadcasting the same scene: a billowing cloud of black smoke and flames coming out from an Underground station in London.

  Williams starts making other, more urgent notifications.

  Within minutes, he has forgotten all about the ten-year-old boy and the Big Man.

  CHAPTER 29

  Lance puts Sam to bed and closes and locks the window.

  “Sam.

  “Yes, Dad,” he says, quiet and subdued.

  “You…I know it’s boring. It’s boring for all of us. But you’ve got to listen to us, including Jason. You’ve got to do what you’re told.”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  Lance goes to the door, turns off the light. “And this light remains off. Until it’s time to get up.”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  “And tomorrow…sorry, you’re confined to your room.”

  In the kitchen, Jason is making a cup of coffee, and there’s an aura, a sense of danger in his tense shoulders as Lance passes him by. He knocks on the door to Sandy’s room and she says, “Come in,” and he goes in.

  She’s reading another one of his books and says, “I plan to read for another twelve minutes. Then I will shut the light off and go to sleep.”

  “That’s good to know,” he says. “You doing all right?”

  Sandy says, “I do have a question, Dad.”

  “Okay.”

  His young daughter says, “When we left Tunisia, we were in a helicopter. Why didn’t it crash?”

  Lance is puzzled. “Sorry, honey, I don’t understand the question.”

  She says, “I understand why aircraft fly. The theory of lift over the wings. That makes sense. But I don’t understand helicopters. They don’t make sense. They should crash.”

  Lance says, “We’ll talk about it tomorrow, okay? I’ll see what I can find.”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  He closes her door and stands for a moment in the hallway, remembering.

  With Karim at his side, and with the other local workers fanning out, he and Teresa race around the dig site, frantically looking for their daughter, after he orders Sam to stay put.

  Lance goes up along the hills on the near side of the camp, and Karim says, “Look! Look!”

  Fresh, small footprints in the dirt.

  And a few minutes later, he and Karim find Sandy, happily sitting in front of a small, open cave that is well hidden from view. Behind her, there are wooden and black plastic crates, piled up high on each other, and in a corner of the cave, one of the crates is open.

  Revealing a tangled collection of RPG-7s, rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

  “Sandy?” Lance asks, coming forward. “What are you doing?”

  “I ran out of things to read back at camp,” she says. “I’m reading now.”

  In a metal box near her that’s been broken open, there are magazines, newspapers, and books, all in Arabic or French. Lance squats down, examines what she’s reading, a thick pile of papers, printed on one side and loosely bound in a black binder.

  Lance takes the binder out of her hand, his breathing quickening. “Honey, we’ve got to go.”

  “But I haven’t finished reading.”

  He grabs his daughter, picks her up. Karim looks past them, at the boxes of weapons piled higher and deeper into the cave.

  Karim’s eyes are wide with fright. “Oh, Lance, this is bad. Very, very bad.”

  Lance starts out of the cave entrance, carrying Sandy, his breathing now labored and harsh.

  “Oh, yes, very bad,” Lance says. “Very bad.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Lance is finally in bed with Teresa, who nuzzles his neck, and he says, “Sandy…she asked me something odd.”

  “Oh, what’s that?” she asks. “Did she ask you to explain the four laws of thermodynamics again?”

  He joins in laughing with Teresa at the memory.

  “She asked me about the helicopter that got us out that day,” Lance says. “Why it didn’t crash.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really. It’s like bees…for a long time, scientists couldn’t figure out how the little buggers fly. Sandy picked up on the same thing for helicopters…how they can fly.”

  Teresa nuzzles him again. “Just be thankful that one could fly that day.”

  Lance is drifting off, comfortable with the sensation of Teresa in his arms, in knowing Sam is safe, Sandy is safe, remembering that last grim day in Tunisia…

  He remembers running back in the heat, holding Sandy close to his chest, Karim shouting into his cellphone, now back at the dig site, more shouts and yells, and the men guarding them, they…

  They toss their AK-47s to the ground, start running away, going to the two sole pickup trucks, starting them up and driving away, tails of dust marking their retreat. Lance is dumbfounded. The trucks belong to Stanford. They’ve just been stolen!

  Karim is still yelling into his cellphone, his free arm up in the air, like this movement can strengthen the cellphone signal, can signal his message.

  Teresa takes Sandy from his arms just outside of the tents and says, “Where did you find her? Is she okay?”

  Lance’s chest is tight and it’s hard to catch his breath. “Sandy…she’s fine. We…found her…in a cave, just over those hills.”

  Teresa grabs Sandy and checks her over, and yells, “Sam! Over here! Right now!”

  Lance whirls around. One by one the men who had worked with them are running away as well, dropping their hand tools, their shovels. Only Karim is still here, still shouting.

  “Lance!” Teresa says, frantic. “What’s wrong? Where is everyone?”

  Lance pulls Sam to his side, and he says, “Sandy…. she found a cave. Full of guns, bombs, rockets. It’s an arms cache…probably belonging to terrorists…”

  Teresa looks wildly around their now deserted dig site. “Lance…what do we do? Where do we go?”

  Even in this hot Tunisian sun, Lance feels frozen in place. He has always depended on the generosity and friendship of the locals whom he and the university have hired, and he has always convinced himself that he could bring his family here and work in a bubble of safety and protection.

  What a fool he’s been.

  “Karim,” he shouts. “Karim, what’s going on?”

  Karim turns away, still yelling, and Lance feels alone, abandoned, even with his family nearby.

  And he wonders…who the hell is Karim talking to? Is he actually looking for help? Or something else? Is Karim upset, insulted over the pay dispute?

  “Look!” Teresa screams.

  She’s pointing up at the hillside, where two and then three black-clad men appear, carrying AK-47s.

  The stuttering gunfire stuns Lance, and he pulls his family down, turning over one of the tables piled high with recently excavated precious artifacts, hearing them smash and crash to the ground and not caring one bit.

  Sandy and Sam are huddled under Teresa’s arms, and Lance has a flash of memory, of learning how the Romans had sacked Carthage and its surrounding lands back in 146 BC and how women and children were put to the sword and slaughtered.

  More men are up on the hillside, and some are running toward them.

  “Lance!” Teresa yells. “We have to do something!”

  Never in his life has he felt this helpless, and he starts to debate with himself: Should he send his family running while he and Karim give themselves up, or should he and Karim try to get the weapons abandoned by their supposed guards and put up a desperate fight, or—

  Karim yells in triumph. “See! See!”

  Lance turns and looks to the east. Two helicopters are descending on the dig sit
e, low and fast. Both are painted the same, with contrasting brown-and-tan schemes, but one looks to be a transport helicopter, and the other—

  The other approaches the hill, starts firing its machine guns. Teresa screams, and Sam and Sandy hold their little hands against their ears. The transport helicopter swoops down beyond the tents, tearing one up with its rotor wash, throwing up clouds of dust and dirt, and Karim says, “Go, we go!”

  Lance pushes, pulls, and drags Teresa and Sam and Sandy along, not caring about the artifacts, the records, their belongings, knowing only that the rattling machine with the spinning blades ahead of them is their lifeboat, their rescue.

  Two soldiers with big helmets lean out of the side door, frantically waving their hands. Karim jumps in first, turns, and helps Sam and Sandy board, and as Lance is dragged in, there’s a change in the pitch of the engine, and the helicopter lifts off.

  Teresa is hugging him, crying, and she shouts. “Thank God we’re safe! We’re safe!”

  Lance rolls over, and through the dust and dirt, he sees their dig site, sees two pickup trucks approaching, big black flags flapping at the rear…

  And then he’s awake in the uncomfortable bed in Levittown, thinking now what he thought back there, in that Tunisian Air Force helicopter, as they left that arms cache and their dig site behind.

  They’ll never be safe, ever again.

  CHAPTER 31

  At 9:03 a.m. the next day, Gray Evans is back at the third-floor offices of his information contact, Abraham, sitting in one of the comfortable chairs around the conference table and reflecting on what he saw walking up to this building.

  Which was nothing. His two parking attendants from the other day were gone.

  What a city, what a world. Maybe his little interaction had put the two of them on the road to a fruitful life, but Gray wouldn’t bet on it.

  Hand clasping his cane tight, Abraham sits across from him and says, “Well, sometimes it comes down to skill, and sometimes it’s luck. Last night it was luck.”

  “Glad that Lady Luck is smiling on you,” Gray says, sipping on a cup of coffee Abraham has provided. “Did she flash her boobies at you, too?”

  “Better than that,” Abraham says with a smile. “Once I got started, I set up a nice little sniffing program that goes through every crack and crevice of the internet, looking for the family and where they might be. Relatives, places of employment, friends, former friends…a nice program that I devised myself, and then…well, it’s like making this huge extravagant dinner from scratch and having everyone compliment you later on the Sara Lee cake you bought for dessert.”

  “Tasty,” Glen says. “Go on.”

  Abraham smiles. “It was the boy, the ten-year-old kid. He popped up online last night for exactly twelve minutes, checking his Gmail account, before he logged off.” Abraham shakes his head. “Kids nowadays, they don’t know it, but they’re living in a science fiction world. Most of them carry around a device that can access the complete stored knowledge of the human race, and they use it to send fart and booger jokes to each other.”

  Gray is getting impatient. “Yeah, kids nowadays…so where is the little punk?”

  Abraham slides over a sheet of paper. “Here are the particulars. The ISP the kid was using came back to a David and Susan Barne of Levittown…but I don’t think that’s where the Sanderson family is staying.”

  “Why not?”

  “Two reasons. Because the Barnes have no connection whatsoever to the Sandersons, and because the house right next door is owned by something called the Hampton Realty Trust.”

  “Which is what?”

  Gray sees that Abraham once again has the happy and serene smile of a man who knows it all and who loves rubbing that in someone else’s face. Gray allows him that little victory, because it’ll be the last smile he ever flashes.

  “Because Hampton Realty Trust is a front organization,” Abraham says. “There’s a shell corporation behind that, and another one behind that…all very hush-hush and well concealed…except to me. The home’s real owners reside in Langley, Virginia.”

  “The CIA,” Gray says.

  “Bingo,” Abraham says. One hand still grasping his cane, Abraham reaches over and taps a line on the sheet of paper. “And check this little bit of information out. The wife and mother, Teresa Sanderson, she has a family connection with law enforcement. You might want to keep that in mind before you proceed.”

  Gray looks again at the information Abraham has provided, nods his head, and folds the sheet of paper and places it in his coat pocket.

  “Great work, Abraham,” he says. “The very best. Which is why this is going to pain me so much.”

  And he pulls out his 9mm Smith & Wesson pistol.

  CHAPTER 32

  Leonard Brooks is dreaming about his response to his first fatal motor vehicle accident as a New York State Trooper—a stolen Toyota Camry had struck a bridge abutment on the Thruway outside of Buffalo and had ejected two high school boys through the windshield—when his bedroom phone rings.

  He wakes up, glad for the interruption. The dream was going into some strange, dark places, which Leonard assumed was a side effect of the stress he’s been under while trying to locate his cousin. The dream had started with the actual memory—the local fire department pumper truck had eventually come by to wash down the blood and brain matter from the abutment’s concrete—but then it had taken a dark turn: Leonard had found himself standing in a drainage ditch, the bloody water swirling around his ankles.

  He grabs the phone and murmurs a greeting.

  A very chipper and alert Beth Draper is on the other end. “Gosh, aren’t we the Gloomy Gus this morning.”

  “Just got off shift,” he says, rubbing at his eyes. He hates the night shifts the most, for a variety of reasons. The main one is his neighbors, obsessed landscapers who are always outside after the sun rises with their leaf blowers and lawn mowers.

  But so far, it’s been quiet, except for this phone call. He rubs at his grainy eyes again and says, “What do you have?”

  “What makes you think I have anything?” Beth asks. “Maybe I’m calling you because I’m going to be in your neck of the woods and I want to offer you the chance to wine, dine, and bed me…and not necessarily in that order.”

  “Beth…”

  She laughs. “All right, couldn’t help myself.” And then the tone of her voice changes to the experienced intelligence official she is. “Your cousin, she has a son, right?”

  “Yeah,” Leonard says. “Samuel. Eight or nine. Too smart for his own good.”

  “Well, the lad is ten, and last night he was online for a few minutes, checking his Gmail account.”

  Leonard is now wide-awake. He swings his legs around and sits up, and fumbles on the nightstand for a pen and a scrap of paper.

  “Go on,” he says.

  “Your smart young fella accessed a computer belonging to a David and Susan Barne of Levittown.”

  “Perfect,” he says, now with pen in hand. “Where is it?”

  She gives him an address, which he scribbles down, and she says, “Before you race over, hotshot, here’s the deal. I don’t think he’s there.”

  “What?”

  “Hold on, hold on,” she says. “It’s like this. I didn’t see any blatant connection between your cousin and the Barne family, and I did a little digging, and found out that the neighboring house belongs to a realty company…which has some spooky connections.”

  “How spooky?”

  “I can’t tell, not right now,” Beth admits. “It’s pretty well protected, but it’s government-connected, that’s for sure, and I don’t mean the embarrassing government we have up in Albany.”

  “The feds.”

  “Yeah.” Beth gives him that address, and he scribbles that down as well, and she says, “My guess is that the place is a safe house of some kind. You still sure your cousin and her hubby don’t have enemies?”

  “Positive,” Leonard
says. “She writes books, he digs in the dirt. How can you get enemies from that?”

  Beth says, “You’d be surprised, my friend. In today’s world, it’s very easy to get on someone’s enemy’s list.”

  Despite the growing anticipation that he now knows where his cousin is located, he yawns and says, “Excuse me for that, okay.”

  “Sure.”

  There’s a noise outside, like someone’s knocking at the door. He says, “All right, safe house. Got it. You’ve done good, Beth.”

  “Of course I have,” she says. “But a safe house…it’s only safe depending who’s there, and who might be out there looking to do them harm. I found out where they live. That doesn’t mean that bad guys won’t do the same. And soon.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Gray Evans is stunned when Abraham suddenly laughs at the barrel of the pistol he is pointing at the man’s heart.

  Abraham says, “For real? You threaten me with that gun after all the times you’ve hired me?”

  Gray supposes he should shoot and get it over with, but something is going on with Abraham and he wants to know more.

  Gray says, “Nothing personal. After a while you need to clean up your business dealings, your patterns, and start new somewhere else. Otherwise you leave behind a traceable trail.”

  Abraham shakes his head. “You think I’ve survived all this time without taking precautions?”

  His info man now really has his attention.

  “Precautions,” Gray says. “Go on.”

  Abraham holds up his cane. “See how tight I always hold this? It’s a dead man’s switch. You do me harm or kill me, and I drop the cane. And when I do that, this entire floor goes up in one hell of a bang.”

  Gray stares at Abraham, who doesn’t flinch, doesn’t move. Abraham adds, “Based on this neighborhood, that might even jump-start a revamp of the entire block, which means a lot of these people won’t be able to afford their housing. You really want to do that, Gray?”