King and Maxwell

by David Baldacci

  back here from Afghanistan? You’re going to let them get away with it?”

  Tyler angrily looked at her. “My dad is not a quitter.”

  “I’m not saying he is or he isn’t, Tyler. But the real answer is up to him.”

  Sean added, “We’ll help you, if you’ll let us.”

  “Why?” asked Wingo. “Why open up a can of worms that isn’t your problem?”

  “I think we’ve already made it our problem,” he answered. “And we can’t put our heads in the sand and hope it goes away. So the only way it gets resolved is to pool our resources and figure it out.”

  Tyler took his father’s arm. “Come on, Dad. Do it.”

  An instant later Michelle said in an urgent tone, “Someone’s coming.”

  CHAPTER

  49

  WINGO AND TYLER WENT LEFT.

  Sean and Michelle darted right.

  The block of men with guns came at them from east and west, converging on the four fleeing people. Yet Michelle’s keen hearing had given them a bit of a head start. Hopefully, it would be enough. Right now it looked too close to call.

  Michelle pushed Sean ahead of her. “Take the next left down that path. It’ll take you to the truck. Get in, start it, and wait two minutes for me.”

  “I’m not leaving you here to go against these guys alone, Michelle.”

  “I’ve got the sniper rifle. Just be prepared to drive a lot faster out of here than you did getting here. Now go!”

  “But—”

  She gave him another hard shove. “Go!”

  Sean sped down the path and turned left.

  Michelle wheeled around, did a quick calculation of the terrain, and raced off to the right, taking up position behind a fallen tree. Using that as her cover and the trunk as the support for her weapon, she readied her rifle and set her crosshairs on the spot from where she believed they would be coming. She calmed her breathing, relaxed her muscles, and waited.

  The first man veered into her line of fire and paid the price for that with a shot to the knee. He went down screaming and clutching at his ruptured joint.

  Michelle immediately sprang up, ran to her right, and took up a new position at the confluence of two trees that were leaning against each other.

  She readied her rifle and swung it across the terrain in front of her. They would be proceeding with caution now, she knew. She acquired the next target and fired before it could disappear on her.

  The slug ripped into the man’s arm where he had left it exposed by a couple of inches. He dropped, gripping his limb, trying to stanch the blood flow.

  Again Michelle moved as soon as she had fired. She was listening for the sound she needed to hear, so desperately wanted to hear. A few seconds later it came.

  The sound of her Land Cruiser starting up.

  That meant Sean at least had gotten to safety. Now she needed to get there, too. The next sound she heard was a bullet whistling past her head and blowing off a chunk of wood from the tree she was standing near. A piece of bark hit her in the head, and blood started flowing down her face. She staggered back, regrouped, took aim, and sprayed five shots across the field in front of her.

  Another shot rang out and she watched in amazement as a man fell from a tree about fifty feet away from her. When he hit the ground his rifle flew from his hands, bounced along the dirt, and shattered against a tree.

  She looked behind her from where the shot had come.

  Sam Wingo was lowering his weapon. He locked gazes with her for a second.

  She nodded in thanks and then Wingo was gone from her view. She had no idea where Tyler was. Maybe Wingo had gotten him to safety and then come back to help. Whatever the reason, Michelle was grateful.

  Michelle wheeled around and sprinted flat-out toward the engine sounds of the Land Cruiser that she knew as well as she did her own name. When she broke into the clearing she saw a man lying facedown. For a moment she was paralyzed because she thought it was Sean. Then the Land Cruiser flew in reverse toward her and the passenger door was thrown open.

  Sean yelled, “Get your butt in here!”

  Michelle jumped in. Sean shifted to drive and mashed down the pedal. The truck flew forward, its back wheels slipping a bit in the dirt before gaining traction, and then they were racing down the road. When they hit asphalt again Sean looked at her and exclaimed, “You’re bleeding.”

  “Thanks for noticing,” she replied. She reached down to the floorboard and picked out a tattered towel from the jungle of items and trash there. She rubbed the blood off.

  “I doubt that’s clean,” he noted.

  “I doubt I care,” she replied.

  “Are you okay?”

  She looked in the vanity mirror, moving her hair out of the way to reveal a cut along her scalp. “Just a shallow bleeder. Blowback from tree bark, not a bullet,” she added. She rummaged in the glove box, pulled out some antiseptic, sprayed it on the wound, and then covered it with a Band-Aid. She sat back against the seat and let out a long breath. “We just used up all of our nine lives back there.”

  He nodded. “And lost Wingo and Tyler in the process. I hope to God they didn’t get killed or captured.” He suddenly slowed. “Do you think we should go back?”

  “No. I think they got out okay.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He saved my life,” Michelle said quietly.

  Sean shot her a glance. “Who did?”

  “Sam Wingo. One of the guys after us got a sight line on me from a tree with a sniper rifle. Wingo got the kill shot on him before he could take me out.”

  “Well, maybe he is on the right side after all.”

  She glanced at him. “What about the guy back by the truck? What happened?”

  “I figured they followed one of us here. Either us or Tyler. I didn’t think they would have gotten a lead on Wingo that fast. I assumed they’d station someone at the vehicle in case we got back to it. I took him out before he could take me out.”

  “I didn’t hear a shot.”

  “That’s because I hit him in the head with a rock.”

  “You got close enough to do that?”

  “No, I hit him from about thirty feet away.”

  “With a rock?” she said in amazement.

  “I never told you I was a pitcher in college?”

  “No, you never did, Sean.”

  “Well, it was good to see I still had some stuff.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “Our problem is I think they followed us to get to Wingo.”

  “You think he thinks we did it on purpose?” she asked.

  “No. Not with the other guy drawing down on you. And I heard other shots.”

  “I got two of them. Non-kills, but they’ll be out of action for a while.”

  “Then Wingo must know we were ambushed too,” Sean replied.

  “Which still doesn’t answer my question. What now?”

  “We need to hook back up with Wingo and Tyler. He’s the only path forward that I can see. Otherwise we’ll keep going around in circles until one bullet or bomb doesn’t miss.”

  “So how do we ‘hook back up’ with them?”

  “You ask a lot of questions. Want to give some answers a try on your own?” he said grumpily.

  “Well, we know what Wingo currently looks like. He changed his appearance quite a bit.”

  “So?”

  “If we can get ahold of some footage at the airports we might get a line on how he got back in the country. He had to come by plane. Ocean freighter would’ve taken a lot longer.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Thanks,” she said curtly. “I have one a year.”

  “So do we go to McKinney or Littlefield with the request?”

  “Oh, why let one have fun over the other? Let’s go to both and hit them together.”

  “Okay, sounds like a plan.”

  “Let’s hope,” said Michelle doubtfully.

  CHAPTER
/>   50

  ALAN GRANT HAD BEEN LISTENING to the news with great interest. Milo Pratt’s body had been discovered in his car, his throat smashed, his life gone. The police had no clues and no suspects and were hoping the public would come forward with some leads to help them track down the murderer.

  Grant knew there would be no public coming forward and no leads to help track down the suspect. He had not allowed himself to be seen. He did not leave evidence behind.

  The body of Jean Shepherd had not been discovered. He doubted it ever would be. But even if it were, he was not unduly worried. He had effectively covered his trail. There would be no way for the police to connect him with her.

  He continued driving out of the city until he reached his final destination. He passed the checkpoint, drove up the steep, narrow road, and got out of his car. Grant walked around the perimeter of his new purchase. The radio station looked remarkably different than it had a short time ago. The electricity had been turned on. His men were moving with precision and urgency. When they were done, the tech team would come in and work their magic.

  The transmission tower was being outfitted with satellite dishes. He watched as one of his men rode high up in a cherry picker, a dish next to him in the lift bucket. Grant then turned his attention to the electronic tablet sitting on his car’s hood. He needed a bit of quiet to compose this email, and the sounds of construction going on within the old radio station would not provide it.

  He was using an untraceable email portal. It didn’t seem like anything was really untraceable these days. But that wasn’t the case if you knew what you were doing. And he did.

  He wrote out the email, editing it over the next several minutes. As his fingers typed in the words Afghanistan and poppies he smiled broadly. Then, satisfied with the email’s contents, he hit the send key. It was like launching a torpedo. He expected this one to slam into its target with even more devastating results than had the first one, about certain rebels being funded by the U.S. government.

  He performed an NSA-level wipe on the tablet, obliterating any trace of the email on it, and then slipped the device into his pocket. His phone buzzed. He pulled it out and looked at the screen. His smile quickly became a frown.

  King and Maxwell were true escape artists, it seemed. Maxwell had shot two of his men while King had incapacitated a third. A fourth man had been killed by Sam Wingo, who had also managed to escape with his son, Tyler.

  Grant put the phone back into his pocket, leaned against his car, looked at the dark sky, and shut his eyes. He hummed the melody from Rhapsody in Blue, a favorite method of his to relax. When he finished he opened his eyes, looked over at the radio station, and calmly thought about his next move.

  The email he had just sent would detonate like a bombshell in D.C. Then the shock waves would emanate out from there. It was so easy to get a message to go viral these days what with all the outlets on social media, and with all the idle eyeballs looking for the next big thing to pass on through the digital spectrum.

  So his plan was good there. Not so good on other counts.

  The former Secret Service agents were seriously hampering his efforts. But for them, he would be much farther ahead. And Wingo now would go deep under. And take his son with him. It made no sense to go full-bore after him right now. Better to go after a target that wasn’t as hardened or as elusive.

  King and Maxwell were the low-hanging fruit. The pair obviously wasn’t an easy target, but Grant played the percentages. And that way of looking at things told him they were the ones to focus on. And there were ways to do that without necessarily going after either of them directly. He didn’t want any more casualties on his end.

  He pulled out his tablet and entered some search terms. The response was fast and illuminating. He looked at the Facebook page of the person—young, sweet, innocent. She could have no idea what was about to hit her like a tsunami.

  King and Maxwell would be his go-to target. Once he got to them he could leverage them to get to Wingo. With him off the board Grant could feel far more confident about his plan succeeding.

  He made a call and conveyed his instructions. They would be carried out quickly and efficiently, he was certain of that.

  Then he looked at his radio station. This was the key. This was the whole ball game right here. If he could make this work, nothing else really mattered.

  CHAPTER

  51

  TYLER SAT ON THE THIN mattress and stared over at him.

  Sam Wingo was at the window of the hotel room peering out, a gun in one hand, his other hand curled around the window drape.

  “Dad?” said Tyler in a shaky voice.

  Wingo held up a hand to quiet his son. He lingered at the window for a few more minutes, his gaze running up and down the streets, to the tops of the buildings and the windows facing him, to the cars parked down below, to the people moving along the sidewalks.

  Finally, he closed the drapes, slipped the gun into his holster, and turned to his son. Wingo started to say something but then stopped as he saw the terror in his son’s eyes. He drew up a chair next to the bed and sat down in it, his knees nearly touching Tyler’s.

  “I’m sorry, Tyler. I’m sorry for all of this. Everything I’ve put you through.”

  “I’m… I’m just glad you’re alive, Dad.”

  Wingo wrapped his arms around Tyler, and they sat there swaying a bit. When Wingo drew back, he took a deep breath and began speaking.

  “First, I know all the stuff you’ve heard on the news. I didn’t steal the money. And I’m not a traitor to my country. I was set up.”

  “I know that, Dad. I never thought you did any of that stuff.”

  “I’m going to find out who did set me up, though.”

  “I know you will.”

  They grew silent, each staring at the other intently.

  Wingo finally rose and paced the small room.

  Tyler looked around the space. “Are we going to stay here? I mean, I’ve got school and a swim meet coming up”

  Wingo stopped pacing and looked over at him.

  “We can’t stay here, no. And as for school and swimming.…” He started pacing again.

  “What about Jean?” asked Tyler.

  His father sat down in the chair. “What about her?”

  “Who was she?”

  Wingo looked markedly uncomfortable by this question.

  Tyler hurried on, “See, I heard she was a plant. That you thought she was working with you. But maybe she was really working for someone else. Like a spy.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Sean and Michelle.”

  “King and Maxwell, the PIs?”