He stayed clear of the driveway, the cameras and sensors there, made his way up through the trees. There were lights on in the house. Farrow’s Bronco and a dark SUV were parked in front. No other vehicles.
He waited in the shadows of the trees, looked at the house. He thought about the times he’d spent there as a boy, overwhelmed by the new life he’d been handed, the second chance he’d been given. He’d been happy then, for the first time he could remember. It was a world away from the life he’d known before. A lifetime away from what he’d become.
“You tell me what you’re looking for,” Holifield said. “I might be able to help.”
Farrow shook his head, distracted. He was going through filing cabinet drawers, then dumping them out on the study floor. Papers, folders. He sorted through files and contracts, looking for his name or mentions of Core-Tech.
He’d brought a pry bar with him to force the cabinet locks. There would be other files at the Unix office, he knew, but anything sensitive or incriminating would be here, where the old man could keep it close.
Holifield sat in a leather chair near the fireplace, watching him, the Uzi on the low table, next to a bowl of dead flowers.
Farrow kicked the last of the files aside, went to the big desk. The two safes he knew about elsewhere in the house had been open and empty. Roland wasn’t coming back anytime soon, if ever. He’d played it as best he could, but still the old man had outmaneuvered him. He was never out ahead.
He sat in the desk chair, the .38 digging into his waist. The top drawer on the right was open. In it were a daily planner, a gold pen set, and a cigar trimmer. The deep bottom drawer was locked. He forced the claw end of the pry bar into the top edge, pulled up until the wood cracked. The lock broke, and the drawer slid open. Inside was a single maroon photo album.
A man stood in the floodlights on the front porch. Lukas had never seen him before. He was young, with close-cut hair, an automatic holstered on his hip.
Lukas took out the Sig, knelt behind a tree. Wind moved the branches above him. He waited.
After a few minutes, the man came off the porch, walked toward the side of the house, stepped up close to the hedges there. Lukas heard him urinating. He moved silently across the driveway and came up behind him, put a hand on his shoulder, and pushed the suppressor into his spine.
“Just be cool,” Lukas said low. “Don’t move. Don’t reach.”
The man froze. Lukas pushed him into the hedge, facing the house. With his free hand, he plucked the gun from its holster, tossed it away. He leaned in, put his mouth near the man’s ear.
“What’s going on here has nothing to do with you,” he said. “Don’t take a risk you don’t need to. How many men inside?”
No response. Lukas screwed the suppressor into his back.
“No one will hear it if I shoot you. You’ll die without a sound right here, facedown in your own piss. That’s the way they’ll find you. Again, how many men inside?”
“Four. I mean, three. Besides me.”
“Farrow in there?”
“Yes.”
“Kemper? Winters?”
“I don’t know who they are.”
They haven’t told this one anything, Lukas thought. Only what he has to do.
“The ones inside,” Lukas said. “Where are they? Be specific.”
“Cody’s in the backyard. Dillon and Drew Holifield are in the house with Mr. Farrow.”
“Just the three of them and Farrow, you’re sure?”
“Yes.”
Lukas pushed him deeper into the hedge, and fired twice.
He started around the side of the house, staying in the shadows close to the wall. Low mist lay like a carpet across the grass. He crept up to the rear of the house, stopped. He visualized the patio there, the yard just beyond, the French doors that led into the dining room.
Just a few feet away, he could hear a man’s labored breathing.
Farrow opened the album on his knee.
“What’s that?” Holifield said. He wandered over.
The first photos were professionally shot portraits of Roland and his most recent wife, then older pictures, like the ones on the wall. Roland shaking hands with politicians, businessmen. Three pages after that were empty, with faint yellow blocks where photos had been. Portraits of the first two wives, he thought. Now paid off and written out.
Holifield opened the cigar box on the desk. “Can I snag a couple of these?”
“Go ahead.”
He took out a habana, smelled it. Farrow tossed the clipper on the desk.
He flipped pages. On the last one, an oversized color photo of a group of children around a Christmas tree. He recognized this room, decorated for the holidays. Stockings hung from the fireplace mantel. The star at the top of the tree almost touched the ceiling. Presents were laid out on a velvet blanket. The kids in the photo ranged in age from five to about ten. And in the middle of the group, unsmiling, dark hair cut short, Lukas Dragovic.
When Lukas looked around the corner of the house, there was a man standing just outside the French doors. He was big, thick with muscle, and Lukas could see acne scars on his neck and jaw. He carried a short-barreled silver-and-black pump shotgun, a police model.
The tent was gone, but the bare stage was still up. The top-left corner of the big flag had come loose, was snapping loudly in the mounting wind.
Lukas stepped around the side of the house, brought up the Sig, said, “Cody.” The man turned, and Lukas head-shot him once, watched him fall.
He stepped around the body, tried the French doors. They were unlocked. He went through into the empty dining room. The hallway ahead was clear. He heard voices from upstairs, knew they were coming from the study.
“Anything interesting?” Holifield said.
Farrow shook his head, closed the album. The .38 was digging into him again. He moved it to the small of his back, beneath his jacket.
He looked at the files strewn on the floor. Coming here had been a waste of time. Part of him wanted to set it all alight, leave the fire to spread. But there would be no sense in that either. There was nothing to do now but head home, start packing.
This place, this part of your life, is done, he thought. Accept it. Time to move on.
Lukas was almost at the living room when a man stepped out into the hallway in front of him. He saw the gun on his left hip, butt out, raised the Sig. The man’s right hand went for the gun, and Lukas shot him through the wrist, then again in the chest. The gun was still in its holster when he hit the floor. Lukas stepped over him, headed for the stairway.
He ejected the Sig’s magazine, fed in the fresh one. He wanted a full clip before going upstairs.
He stopped at the bottom step. It was quiet up in the study. Had they heard the shots?
When the voices began again, he started up the stairs.
“You hear that?” Farrow said.
“What? I didn’t hear anything.”
“Downstairs.”
“It’s that flag out back you heard,” Holifield said. “Wind’s gonna take the whole thing down soon.” He clipped the end of a cigar. “Light?”
Farrow put his Zippo on the desktop. Holifield took it, lit the cigar, puffed until he got it going. “Thanks.”
He handed the lighter back. Farrow reached for it, then looked past him, saw Lukas there in the doorway, a gun in his hand.
Too easy, Lukas thought. There was Farrow, sitting at the old man’s desk, looking at him. Holifield, one of his men, in front of it, with his back to the door. No one else in the room.
Holifield turned, lit cigar in hand, saw him, then looked toward the fireplace. Lukas followed his gaze, saw the machine gun on the table there. He aimed and fired in one smooth movement. The round hit Holifield in the shoulder, knocked him into the desk, and Lukas put two more into his chest before he hit the floor.
Farrow pushed away fast from the desk, stood, the chair tipping over behind him. Lukas swung the Sig toward
him. The cigar had landed, smoking, on the desktop.
Farrow looked at him, then out into the hall.
“They’re all dead,” Lukas said.
Farrow looked back at him. “You are a son of a bitch, aren’t you?” Keeping his cool.
“Thought I might find you here,” Lukas said. “Where’s the old man?”
“Gone.”
Lukas came farther into the room. “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. There’s an old proverb: ‘When the tree falls, the monkeys scatter.’”
“That right?”
“Tariq’s dead.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“You set us up.”
“I gave you an address, that’s all.”
“Was it even the right one?”
Farrow reached into a jacket pocket. Lukas tightened his finger on the trigger.
The hand came back out with a pack of Marlboros. He held them up. Lukas nodded.
Farrow thumbed the pack open. There was only one cigarette left.
“Does Devlin know who I am?” Lukas said.
“He does now.” He took out the cigarette, crushed the pack, and tossed it on the desk. “But he’s the least of your worries.”
“Why?”
“The old man’s decided both of us are expendable. That’s why he left us behind. One of the last things he did was give me the okay to take you out.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Believe what you want.” He speared his lips with the cigarette. “He’s cutting ties with anybody who can hurt him. He’ll send Winters—or somebody else—to deal with us. Damage control is his genius.”
“You and me, we’re in the same boat?”
“He fucked us both. His plans for his future don’t include either of us. The only thing to do now is what he’s doing. Limit our exposure, look after ourselves.”
He picked up the Zippo from where it had landed on the desktop, lit the cigarette, snapped the lighter closed. His hands were steady.
“You sent me after Devlin’s family. Did the old man know about that?”
“Would it matter if he did?”
“It would to me.”
“He doesn’t want to know how things get done. He just wants them to happen. That’s what he paid me for.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“Get far away, monitor the situation.” He took a deep drag on the cigarette. “If they take the old man down, I don’t want to be anywhere near him. Afterward’s a different story.”
“Maybe you’ll run Unix then,” Lukas said.
“Maybe.” He blew out smoke, nodded at the Sig. “I saved your life, you know. You owe me that. Got you out of that shithole country, brought you here. If I hadn’t, where would you be now?”
“Maybe I’d be better off if I’d stayed there.”
“You think you’re gonna prove your loyalty to him by taking me out? Buy your way back in with my scalp? It won’t work. You were useful to him once. Now you’re not. The same with me.”
“I’ll have to think about that.”
Farrow squared his shoulders. “You’re not as tough as you think you are, kid. I’ve done things you can’t even fucking imagine. So don’t give me that dead-eyed hard-guy bullshit. I was taking lives thirty years before you were born, face-to-face, eyeball to eyeball. You got the stones to pull that trigger, do it.”
Lukas watched him. Any fear there was gone now.
“We were soldiers,” Farrow said. “We don’t get to complain if we lose. The way things worked out is the way they worked out. None of that shit’s personal.”
“This is.”
“Then pull that trigger.”
Lukas blinked sweat from his eyes. He saw Farrow’s gaze shift, toward the door behind him.
One moment, the doorway was empty. A second later, Farrow saw Dillon there, shirt blotched with blood, using the jamb for support, holding a gun. Lukas saw him, turned, and both of them fired. Dillon went down.
Farrow reached behind, smoothly drew the .38.
Lukas swung back toward him, and Farrow fired, saw the round hit the wall over his head. He cursed, dropped his aim, fired again, but Lukas was already spinning away, back through the open door.
Farrow crouched behind the desk. He swung the .38’s cylinder open. Three rounds left. He snapped it shut.
The room reeked of gunpowder. He felt a fierceness sweep through him. Now we’re down to it, he thought. No more talk, no more lies. Down to the element. What was real.
Lukas kept his back against the wall. The other man lay dead at his feet in the doorway.
He looked down the stairs at the empty living room. You can just leave, he thought. Walk out. There’s nothing to be gained here, nothing to be won.
“Hey, motherfucker,” Farrow said. “You run out on me?”
Lukas stayed just outside the doorway, listening. Would Farrow try for the Uzi? If so, he’d have to cross the room. Lukas would hear it, could hit him before he reached it.
“You hear me, kid? What are you gonna do?”
He wiped sweat from his eyes, looked down the stairs again. He could be down there, out of sight, before Farrow even knew. All he had to do was walk away.
Farrow took a last drag on the cigarette, flicked it away. He could hear Lukas breathing out in the hallway.
He cocked the .38. Enough hiding, he thought. You got three hot ones in here. Three chances to stay alive. Make ’em count.
“You still there?” he said. “You got the balls to do this face-to-face?”
The breathing sounded closer now. He heard the creak of a footstep inside the room.
He swung up from behind the desk, the gun in both hands, and there was Lukas, ten feet away.
They fired at the same time. Farrow heard a bullet go past him, stood his ground, squeezing the trigger of the .38, the hammer rising and dropping, the big room filling with the sound of gunshots. He felt rounds hit him, drive him back, heard the .38 click on an empty chamber. Then he was on his back on the hardwood floor, looking up at the high ceiling.
Lukas moved to stand over him, aiming down. Farrow tried to speak, but his mouth was full of blood. He looked into the muzzle of the suppressor.
Lukas fired twice. Brass hit the floor, rolled, and was silent. The only sound was the snapping of the flag outside.
There was a bar of heat along his left side. He unzipped the jacket, peeled it back. One of Farrow’s shots had creased him just above the hip. The others had gone wild. His sweater was torn, the material dark with blood. Adrenaline was keeping the pain away, he knew. He would feel it later.
He went back downstairs, his footsteps echoing in the empty house, then out the front door and into the wind.
By the time Lukas found a motel, his left pants leg was soaked through to the knee. The wound had stopped bleeding after a while, was already scabbing over, dry and rough to the touch.
At a twenty-four-hour drugstore, he’d gotten what he’d needed. Tried to keep the pain out of his face while he paid the clerk, hoped he didn’t see the blood.
He peeled off his clothes in the motel bathroom, looked at the wound. It was a dark red line an inch above his left hip bone, where the bullet had scored the flesh. Under the shower, it started to bleed again. Pink water swirled in the drain.
He dried off, poured alcohol on his side. The pain made him gasp. He took the tweezers he’d bought, stood sideways in front of the bathroom mirror, and extracted the strands of fiber he could see in the wound. When he was done, he doused it all with alcohol again, put two gauze patches across the wound, and fastened them in place with surgical tape. The cotton immediately began to darken.
He reloaded the Sig from the box of shells in the gear bag, then got his phone, called the number he had for Kemper. Five rings, then nothing. He hung up.
He lay naked atop the bed, drifting with eyes half closed, the Sig beside him, when the phone buzzed. He brought it to his ear.
“What’s
your location?” Winters said.
“Does it matter? Let me talk to him.”
“Not gonna happen.”
“He’ll want to hear what I have to say. I had an issue with the major.”
“And?”
“It was dealt with. I need to know where I stand.”
“Keep this phone,” Winters said, and broke the connection.
Fifteen minutes later, it buzzed again.
“He wants to talk to you,” Winters said. “Down here.”
“He knows the situation? That I’m exposed?”
“That’s why he wants you here. Where are you?”
Lukas didn’t answer.
“Play it your way,” Winters said. “There’s a Learjet registered to the company leaving Richmond International tomorrow at noon. You need to be on it.”
“To where?”
“You’ll see when you get there,” Winters said, and ended the call.
Thirty-Nine
Devlin left Riviera Beach at dawn. He’d gotten into Florida at eleven the night before, slept a few hours, then gassed up the boat and steered out of the inlet, heading south by southeast.
It was a straight sixty-mile run to the Bahamas. He’d made it once before, so he plotted the same course again, the charts spread out on the galley table.
The wind was light as he crossed the Gulf Stream, the sky clear, and he made a good six knots as he bore south on open water, the engines running smoothly.
Four hours later, he cleared Customs and Immigration at West End, then topped off the tanks and headed south again. It was another hundred miles to Green Turtle Cay, but he took it slower now. Running between the islands, he had to watch for shallows, had learned to gauge water depth by its color. Brown meant rock or coral just below the surface. Lighter brown could be shoals or sandbars. Green where the water was deeper. Dark blue as it grew deeper still.
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