Viral Siege

by Don Pendleton

  “I haven’t heard from him in a while,” Riba said. “Is he in trouble?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. He’s off the radar.”

  “Not doing work for you?”

  “No. He takes on assignments independently. I found out he was doing a favor for a colleague in Justice. The guy Cooper is looking for is FBI, and it’s being kept low-key because there’s a suspected security leak in the guy’s department. The man Cooper is looking for may have been compromised. Cooper went after the agent, but it looks as if the mission has gone off the rails.”

  “Can’t you trace him through his cell?”

  “Tried but no luck. My friend told me the area he was working, so at least I can point you in the general direction. The last signal we picked up was somewhere in the Northwest. The nearest town of any size is called Hardesty, some little town way up from Seattle. But his cell has stopped transmitting completely.”

  “That’s closer to me than your neighborhood,” Riba said.

  “Can’t deny that was on my mind,” Brognola said with a trace of embarrassment.

  Riba laughed softly. “Does Pinda Lickoyi have a red face?”

  “Maybe. He also has a missing friend, Joshua. I’ve tried my legitimate sources, but I haven’t come up with anything yet by having to pussyfoot around.”

  “So now you’re checking unofficial sources.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let me try,” Riba said. “Give me the source of his last cell signal and I’ll put on my tracking moccasins and go take a look.”

  “You sure about this?”

  “What the hell. Business is quiet and I don’t like quiet.”

  “I won’t forget this.”

  “Wait until you get my bill,” Riba said.

  “Give me an hour, and I’ll have a chopper pick you up and fly you to Cooper’s last known location. By the time you arrive, there will be a set of wheels waiting.”

  “Sounds good. Am I on expenses?” Riba said with a chuckle in his voice.

  “Find Cooper and I’ll add a bonus.”

  Just over an hour later Riba was buckled into the passenger seat of a chartered helicopter as it lifted off from New Mexico and quickly gained height. Riba had been ready by the time the chopper showed up. He had tossed in his gear, answering his cell phone even as the helicopter took off.

  Brognola again.

  “Nice timing,” Riba said.

  “We aim to please,” the big Fed said. “When you touch down, a Chevy 4x4 will be waiting for you. Fueled up and ready to roll. You’ll know which one it is because it’s red. Just like the one you own.”

  * * *

  RIBA OPENED THE DOOR and stepped inside the diner, looking around the near-empty place.

  One man stood behind the counter. Another was perched on one of the stools, clad in denim work clothes, hunched over a steaming mug. Both men picked up on Riba’s imposing figure as he crossed the diner and took a seat.

  “Can I get you something?” the guy behind the counter asked.

  Riba nodded. “Coffee would be good.”

  The other customer glanced at Riba.

  “Long way from home, ain’t you, Chief?”

  Riba took off his hat and dropped it on the counter. He nodded.

  “You might say that. Not much going on around here.”

  “Been that way since they built the new highway and killed the town.”

  Riba smiled at the old man. “That so?”

  “Gets so he tells ever’body who comes in,” Vern Mitchell said.

  “If they’ll listen,” Sam Jarvis complained. He used an old man’s hard-done-by tone. “All I’m sayin’ is this town had a life before they took the traffic away. So we don’t get many visitors of late. Only a few of the surviving locals and that’s not many.”

  “Had that young couple in the other day.”

  “Ha,” Jarvis snapped. “All they had time for was lookin’ at each other. They only come in ’cause they got lost. Just before Cooper showed...”

  Riba’s head came up, his eyes fixing on the old man.

  Behind the counter Mitchell sucked in a breath.

  Sam Jarvis seemed to shrink under the P.I.’s gaze.

  Riba took a long swallow of coffee and pushed his mug across the counter for a refill. He watched Mitchell top up the mug. Riba reached inside his jacket and took out his ID. He placed the opened black leather badge holder on the counter so both Mitchell and Jarvis could see it clearly.

  “My name’s Joshua Riba. I’m a licensed P.I. I work out of New Mexico. I’m here because I heard Matt Cooper might be in some kind of trouble. He’s my friend. We worked together a while ago and covered each other’s back. I’m here to do the same thing for him.”

  The silence stretched, Mitchell and Jarvis unsure how to take Riba’s explanation.

  “Kind of difficult for us right now,” Mitchell said. “How do we know you aren’t...?”

  “Out to cause Cooper harm?”

  Jarvis nodded. “See, the way things already played out, we don’t know who we can trust.”

  “You saying Cooper’s out on a limb?”

  “Him and Laura both,” Mitchell said hurriedly.

  “Laura?”

  “They took off together and we haven’t heard from them since,” Jarvis said.

  “Hey, slow down,” Riba said. “Laura?”

  “Laura Devon,” Mitchell said. “She works here. Kind of took your guy Cooper under her wing when he came in lookin’ worse for wear.”

  “He hurt bad?”

  “He come walkin’ in through a rainstorm,” Jarvis said. “It looked like he’d been through the wringer. Had a nasty clout on his head an’ was in a bad way. Seems he was on the run from people trying to do him harm.”

  “And he was having some difficulty recalling who he was and why he was here,” Mitchell said. “But he knew enough not to want to get us involved.”

  “How do you mean difficulty? Memory loss?”

  Mitchell nodded. “Something like that. Now, Laura wouldn’t have any of him leaving. He insisted but then he kind of lost it and collapsed. Laura has a room out back, and we helped carry him there and put him on her bed.”

  “Regular ministering angel,” Jarvis added. “She was a medic in the military. Served her time on Afghanistan. She tended to him and made him stay put. He slept overnight, but come morning he said he had to move on. He was more concerned we might get into trouble if he stayed around. Hell, that boy worried more about our lives than he did his own.”

  That was Cooper, Riba thought. He had the capacity for thinking about others first, putting his own safety last if others were being exposed to harm.

  “What happened then?”

  “Come morning Cooper said he had to get moving. Laura brought her own car and insisted she drive him,” Jarvis said. “He was still weak from whatever happened to him. Now, he was ready to take himself off on his own, but he saw sense in the end and they left in Laura’s car.”

  “Where were they heading?”

  “Cooper wanted to find out what happened to him. He has a regular bee in his bonnet about it. What was making him mad was he couldn’t recall how things started out. He figured he crashed his vehicle a way back along the road. So he decided to start there.”

  Riba considered his options. There weren’t many.

  “Did either of them have a cell phone?”

  “Laura took hers. He didn’t have one when he came in,” Jarvis said.

  “You have her number?” Riba asked. “I can get it traced. Maybe give me some idea where they might be heading.”

  Mitchell and Jarvis looked at each other, still wary of Riba.

  “If I can come up with traci
ng Laura’s cell phone, so can the opposition,” he said. “I can call a contact in Washington. He’ll confirm who I am. And he can help track Laura’s cell phone.” A thought occurred to Riba. “Have there been any strangers around since this started? People checking the town? Unknown vehicles?”

  “You said there were a couple out on the south road, Sam,” Mitchell said. “That would be the stretch Cooper walked into town from.”

  Jarvis nodded. “That’s right. I was driving out to see if I could spot Cooper’s car. He said he’d run off the road a few miles back. Now, I did spot an SUV cruising the area. So I stayed out of sight.”

  “You get any ID from them?”

  Jarvis shrugged. “Guess I’m not as sharp as I might have been,” he said. “Only thought about it later.”

  “Don’t fret about it,” Riba said.

  “Only thing I do recall. That SUV was black and had those tinted windows. You know, the kind you can’t see through.”

  “Never do understand that,” Mitchell said. “All black. Shaded glass. Folk are more likely to remember something like that. Or do they think it makes them invisible?”

  “Go figure,” Riba said. “Did you spot Cooper’s vehicle?”

  “I found it. It was off road like Cooper said, jammed up against a big old tree. The front was wrecked. It looked like somebody had already checked it out, too. And there were bullet holes in the thing. Looks like it took a few shots. Now, I did get details. Registration.” Jarvis searched through his pockets. “Seems I put the details in here somewhere. Forgot all about it.” He finally produced a folded paper, opened it up and handed it to Riba.

  Keying his cell phone, Riba waited until the contact number wound its way through the secure channels. He recognized Hal Brognola’s gruff voice.

  “Riba,” he said by way of identifying himself.

  “You got something?”

  “Maybe. Can you run a trace on this cell phone?”

  Riba quoted the number and Brognola said, “We’ll run it. Anything else you have to tell me?”

  “I’m in Hardesty. Cooper was here. From what I’ve found out he was injured. Sketchy details but seems like he had some head trauma and his memory had been affected. His vehicle was abandoned. It had been in a collision with a tree and had some bullet holes in it. He walked quite a distance and ended up in Hardesty. He rested up overnight, then took off accompanied by a local woman who was driving him. The cell phone number belongs to her. If we run a trace, we might locate Cooper.”

  “I’ll come back as soon as we have anything. Watch your back, Joshua.”

  “I always do.”

  “What the hell is going on up there?”

  “You’ll know when I do.”

  Riba ended the call. He toyed with the coffee mug, aware there was little he could do until Brognola called back—hopefully with information that would put him on Cooper’s trail.

  “This is one quiet town,” Riba said.

  “In the process of shutting down,” Mitchell said. “Only a few of us left.”

  “The bridge leading to the interstate did for us,” Jarvis said. “Left the town high and dry like I said.”

  “Hey, the man doesn’t need telling.”

  “I don’t mind,” Riba said. “World moves on and places get left behind. That be the bridge I came over after I left the interstate?”

  “That’s right,” Jarvis said with a satisfied smirk on his weathered face.

  “Sam, why don’t we put it all down on tape and you can sell copies whenever you get folk stopping for gas.”

  Jarvis stared at his friend. “Times are, Vern, I despair over you.”

  “You hungry?” Mitchell asked Riba. “I know Laura isn’t here, but I can turn my hand to workin’ in the kitchen. We got ham, steak and such.”

  “Sounds good,” Riba said. “Hey, tell you what. I did some time in a kitchen once. Let me step back there and rustle us up something. Give me something to do.” He walked around the counter and went through to the kitchen. “Nice setup. You bring me another coffee and I’m all set to go.”

  “You got it,” Mitchell said.

  * * *

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER and the rich aroma of cooking meat wafted into the diner. Mitchell and Jarvis could hear Riba humming to himself as he cooked.

  “You need any help back there?” Mitchell asked.

  “Thanks, no.”

  Mitchell turned to speak to Jarvis. The old man had slid off his stool and was standing at the diner’s front window. He was watching a black SUV easing along the street. It turned and rolled into the diner’s parking lot, facing the building. It stopped and doors opened. Three men exited the vehicle.

  “Riba,” Jarvis called.

  “Be ready in a minute,” the P.I. replied.

  Mitchell had seen the newcomers. He muttered under his breath as he saw the trio moving toward the front door.

  “We got visitors,” Mitchell said over his shoulder. “I don’t think they’ve come for the chef’s special.”

  Riba peered over the serving shelf and picked out the approaching trio.

  “Let’s see what they want,” he said.

  Mitchell heard the solid double-click as Riba dogged back the hammer on his Peacemaker.

  “My insurance doesn’t cover this kind of situation,” Mitchell said.

  The door opened and the three men walked into the diner. They separated as they crossed to the counter. Jarvis followed them and took his place on his regular stool.

  “Morning, gents,” Mitchell said. “What can I get you?”

  The men were casually dressed. They could have been simply passing through if it hadn’t been for the tight expressions on their faces or the sharp gleam of menace in their eyes.

  “We’re looking for a friend of ours. He came through town a day or so back,” one of them said. “Might have been hurt.”

  “Car crash?” Jarvis asked innocently.

  The speaker turned to stare at him. “What do you know about it, Pop?”

  Jarvis bristled. “I’m not your pop. And I know about it because I run the gas station down the street. I might’ve taken a drive and seen the wreck.”

  “What else did you see?”

  “Just a wrecked car. Nobody in it. That’s all. Sonny.”

  Mitchell could have yelled at the old man. He knew Jarvis was deliberately goading the man. Jarvis had a sharp tongue, and he didn’t take crap from anyone. He tried to catch the man’s eye but Jarvis pointedly ignored him.

  “No one has been through town?”

  “It isn’t Times Square. We’d notice if a stranger showed up.”

  “So who belongs to the red SUV out there?” one of the other men asked. He turned to look at Riba’s vehicle.

  “Not that it’s any of your business,” Jarvis snapped, “but it’s mine.”

  The guy gave a harsh laugh. “No way, old man—those wheels don’t spell your name. Reckon your feet wouldn’t even reach the pedals.”

  “Oh?” Jarvis bristled. “At least I can spell, sonny.”

  A cold sensation rolled Mitchell’s stomach. He saw it coming, but there wasn’t a thing he could do.

  The guy closer to Jarvis half turned his upper body. His left arm came with it, palm open, and he hit Jarvis across the side of his head. The blow landed square, the impact throwing the old man off his stool. Jarvis didn’t even have time to yell as he dropped, hitting the diner floor hard.

  “No way!” Mitchell yelled.

  He reacted out of pure instinct, his right hand swinging the open-topped coffeepot. Steaming liquid erupted from the pot and hit the guy full in the face. He stepped back, screaming, his hands clawing at his raw flesh.

  The guy who had first started asking questions reached
under his open jacket and started to pull the pistol he had in a shoulder holster. He got the black SIG Sauer clear and turned it in Mitchell’s direction.

  The solid crack of Riba’s .45 Colt Peacemaker drowned out every other sound in the diner as he leaned into view and fired.

  The heavy slug hit the would-be shooter in the right shoulder, breaking bone as it cored in. The short range helped maintain the slug’s velocity and it spun the target around. He stumbled and went down on his knees, clutching his bloody shoulder, his pistol dropping from numb fingers.

  Riba burst into view from the kitchen area as the third man pulled his own weapon from his hip holster. It was a similar weapon to the one his stricken partner had wielded. He jerked it in the direction of the moving P.I., triggering a couple of shots that exploded crockery on the shelf close to Riba.

  The P.I. hauled himself to a stop, leveling the big revolver, and put a pair of .45 slugs into his opponent. The guy stepped back, eyes widening with the shock of the impacts. Riba’s accuracy placed both bullets over the guy’s heart as they mushroomed through his ribs, splintering bone and tearing into the organ. He dropped without a sound.

  Moving into the diner, Riba quickly collected the discarded weapons, reaching into the coat of the coffee-scalded guy and taking his. He tossed the guns on the counter. He made the now-moaning man sit on one of the barstools while Mitchell brought a clean towel soaked in cold water. He handed it to the man.

  “Use it,” Riba said. “Just don’t make any stupid moves ’cause I still got loaded chambers here.”

  Then he said to Mitchell, “Go check Sam.” When the man hesitated Riba snapped, “Do it now, Vern.”

  Riba took out his cell phone and dialed Brognola’s number again.

  “Time to work your magic,” Riba said when the big Fed came on.

  He ran Brognola through what had happened.

  “Now I know why Cooper likes you,” Brognola grumbled. “You’re just like him.”

  “They weren’t about to discuss things in a civilized manner,” Riba muttered. “And thanks for the compliment.”

  “Okay. You need to stay where you are. Don’t go running off before we clear this with the local law. Understand, Joshua? You take off and you could have a posse of law on your tail.”