King and Maxwell

by David Baldacci

  “They’re tight,” she said, “but I feel them giving a bit.”

  It took about thirty minutes, and Tyler could hear Kathy breathing hard with the effort. But then his hands were free. He undid the rope around his feet and then quickly freed her.

  “Now what?” she said in a whisper.

  Tyler pointed at the window. “If we can get out there, we can make a run for it.”

  “What if they have someone posted outside?”

  Tyler slid up his baggy pant leg. Strapped to his calf was a cylinder.

  “Pepper spray. My dad. He’s kind of paranoid.”

  They eased across to the window, taking their time because the floorboards were old and had a tendency to squeak.

  Tyler slipped aside the black cloth covering the window and peered out.

  “It’s dark outside,” he whispered. “That’s good for us.”

  He examined the window lock. It was a simple one. He had the window up in another minute, taking care to slide it slowly in case it made any noise.

  He passed through the open window first and then helped Kathy.

  They stopped to look around. A black SUV was parked in the front. It was the same one Tyler had climbed into at the mall. They had driven away and then a cloth had been placed over his face and he had quickly fallen unconscious.

  “Looks like we’re in the woods,” he said quietly to Kathy. She nodded, shivered, and said, “Which way?”

  “Hey!”

  They turned and saw a man standing on the porch.

  “Run, Kathy,” yelled Tyler.

  She turned and raced away. The man hoofed it after her. Tyler stepped in front of the man and blasted him in the eyes with the pepper spray. The man screamed, staggered, collided with Tyler, and they both went down in a tangle of arms and legs. Tyler punched and kicked at the blinded man until he saw something. Kathy was not running anymore.

  A man shrouded in the darkness had placed a gun against her head.

  Tyler instantly stopped struggling.

  “Big mistake, Tyler, an unforgivable mistake,” said Alan Grant.

  “Please, don’t hurt her,” Tyler yelled, tears flooding his eyes.

  The gun fired.

  CHAPTER

  66

  “IT’S BEEN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS!” EXCLAIMED Sam Wingo.

  “Yes it has,” replied Sean calmly.

  They were at the motel where they had stayed the night, waiting for the phone to ring or a text to come from Tyler.

  Michelle was leaning against the wall of the motel room. “And we told you they would do this to string you out, to make your nerves get the best of you.”

  “And we know Kathy is with them,” added Sean. “The news story confirmed that she’s missing.”

  Wingo looked miserable. “I know her parents. Her mom’s in the Air Force. All that was left… was a tennis racket and a can of balls on the sidewalk.”

  “No one saw or heard anything,” said Michelle. “Which tells us these guys are pros.”

  “But the good news is that although they’re aware we met, they don’t know that we’ve officially hooked up,” said Sean. “We’re going to provide backup that they might not anticipate.”

  “We’ll have little time to prep,” added Michelle. “They’ll call and expect us to be there shortly thereafter.”

  “How do we get back on the offensive?” asked Wingo. “I don’t like reacting to others, particularly when they have my son.”

  “We’ve still got prep work to do,” said Sean.

  “Prep work based on what?” asked Wingo.

  “On being Secret Service agents,” replied Michelle.

  “I’m Special Forces. If it comes to it, we’re used to close-quarter combat a lot more than you guys.”

  Michelle looked at him. “But you liked all the guys you fought with?”

  “Of course. You go in willing to die for the guy next to you.”

  “Did you ever have to eat a bullet for someone you didn’t like?” asked Sean.

  “No,” said Wingo.

  “It kind of sucks,” added Michelle. “But it’s in the job description for the Secret Service.”

  “And it gives you perspective,” amended Sean.

  “Such as?” asked Wingo.

  “Such as never let the other guys see what you’re looking at. It’s why we all wore reflective shades. Now let’s get to work.”

  Grant was at the radio station.

  The construction work was done. Those workers were now gone and had been replaced with another set. These were not muscular young men. They didn’t carry guns. They did not act macho. Their weapon was their brain. Their bullet was their keyboard. They were cyber warriors.

  He made his way around the interior of the old building with the new guts that had transformed it into a state-of-the-art tech center with only one goal.

  Focused mayhem.

  That meant one act that would bring cataclysmic events across the globe. Grant didn’t really care about that part of the equation. Others could reap the benefits from that. He was just righting a wrong. It was that simple. He was not going to let his focus waver from that.

  A reader outside the vault scanned his retina and he entered the space, the only one with access here. He sat in front of a bank of computers and studied each of them. Progress was being made. His bird in the sky was searching for what it needed. It was like a private detective looking for a thread that would provide him a solid lead, which would coalesce into a suspect that could end in an arrest and a conviction.

  Only the elements were bunches of ones and zeros instead of flesh and blood, and his sleuthing was confined to wireless data zipping across the ether. The system they were trying to crack had more than thirty million lines of code. There were many ways inside, but once inside the malware to be planted had to remain hidden. And that limited the possible ports of entry.

  Grant continued to watch the unique confrontation taking place on the computer screen. It was a delicate ballet of choreographed movements, feints, probes, counterattacks, and more sparring. It was actually far more intriguing than any clash on the ground involving guns and bombs. They were brutally efficient killing devices. But they lacked the intellectual purity, the high level of sophistication needed to carry off something like this.

  With any other target Grant would have been successful by now. But his target wasn’t just any target. It was heavily protected. It was known to have threats against it. It was one of the most famous targets in the world, in fact. And it had never been seriously threatened. But that didn’t make it invulnerable. That just made it challenging, and Grant loved a challenge. Even the best security sometimes grew lax as year after year passed and no successful attack was ever launched against it. That was why he had a chance to do what no one else had ever done before.

  And he noted, with a degree of confidence, that the barriers to entry depicted on the screen were falling one by one. In fact, given this burn rate, he would be through in a shorter period of time than he thought.

  He drew out the itinerary for which he had killed Milo Pratt. He ran his eye down the column and finally settled on one that appeared to be in the window of possibilities. He sat back in his chair and dreamed what had for so long seemed the impossible dream.

  Revenge. And justice. Two of the most potent desires in the world. They were not mutually exclusive. In fact, thought Grant, they went hand in hand extremely well. His father had killed himself over a scandal not of his making. Now the current president was attempting a similar and equally misguided maneuver on the world’s geopolitical stage. Well, this time the administration would pay the price. Grant’s learning of the plan had been the prime reason behind the timing of his operation. It had come none too soon. The grief over his parents’ deaths was becoming unbearable.

  Well, it was finally about to end.

  CHAPTER

  67

  “WHERE DO WE DO THE exchange?” said Wingo.

  The call h
ad come at last, the next night when the rain was howling outside and the temperature had plummeted as the storm system struck the region.

  The filtered voice was mechanical, but the words it spoke were stunning. “There will be no exchange.”

  Sean and Michelle, who were listening in because Wingo was using the speakerphone feature on his cell, exchanged a sharp glance.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” snapped Wingo. “I’m willing to come in if you let my son go.”

  “That may have been your thinking, but it isn’t ours.”

  “What then?” barked Wingo.

  “Keep calm, Wingo. All you have to do is stand down. You do nothing. If you do that, you will see your son alive. If not, he’s dead.”

  Wingo covered his face with his hands and took a deep breath. Michelle put a supportive hand on his shoulder.

  “How do I know I can trust you?” said Wingo.

  “How do we know we can trust you?”

  “Even if I stand down, how will you know I am?”

  “We’ll know, Wingo. We have assets in place. You talk to anyone, go anywhere, tell the FBI about your son, give anyone something that will help them on this, we’ll know. And then your son is no more. That is a guarantee.”

  Sean pointed to the phone and then his ear. He mouthed the name, “Tyler.”

  Wingo said, “I want to talk to my son. Right now. Or no deal.”

  A few moments passed, and then Tyler’s voice came on the line.

  “D-dad?”

  “Tyler, are you all right?”

  “I’m really scared. These people—”

  There were sounds of a scuffle and Tyler’s voice broke off.

  “Tyler? Tyler!” yelled Wingo into the phone.

  The mechanical voice came back on. “Stand down, Wingo. Then you get him back.”

  “What about Kathy Burnett?”

  “Just stand down. And you get your son back.”

  The line went dead.

  Wingo slowly sat up.

  Sean rubbed his jaw and said, “Okay, that was an unexpected development.”

  Michelle was eyeing Wingo. “We’re going to get him back, Sam.”

  “You have no way of knowing that,” said Wingo bitterly. “And it sounds like Kathy is dead.”

  Michelle looked at Sean but said nothing. It did sound like Kathy Burnett was dead.

  Wingo looked up. “So there’s nothing more to do. Except wait and hope to God they keep their word.”

  “That’s you, not us, Sam,” said Sean. “We have to keep working this thing.”

  “But it might put Tyler in danger.”

  “He’s already in danger,” said Michelle. “And let’s be brutally honest here. I don’t see them voluntarily letting him go whether you stand down or not, do you?”

  Wingo stared at her, the lines in his forehead hardening for a moment and then going lax. “No, I don’t.”

  “Our best chance to get Tyler and Kathy back is to find them.”

  “How?” barked Wingo. “You have nothing to go on.”

  Sean sat down next to him. “I know you’re under incredible stress. I’ve never been a dad so I can’t possibly know what you’re really feeling. But I’m asking you to trust us, Sam. We know what we’re doing. And we will do our best to get them both back. Alive.”

  Michelle knelt on Wingo’s other side and said, “The only reason I got into this case was because of Tyler. I could feel something was off with him. I knew how much he missed you, Sam. How much he didn’t want you to be gone. I will do anything, risk my life even, to get him back to you.”

  Wingo slowly nodded. “Okay. Okay, I do trust you. Please, just get them back safe.”

  They left Wingo in the motel room and climbed into Michelle’s Land Cruiser.

  “We promised the man a lot,” said Sean. “And now we need to deliver on that promise.”

  “What about Kathy?”

  “We said both of them. That means what it means.”

  “But if she’s dead?”

  “We can only try, Michelle. That’s all we can ever do.”

  “Is Edgar our next stop? If he’s been able to track the IP address of Carlton’s source?”

  “If he had he would’ve contacted us. It won’t do us any good looking over his shoulder. Geniuses work best alone.”

  “What then?”

  “We have a lead we haven’t followed up yet.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “Heron Air Service’s connection to Vista Trading Group.”

  “Edgar couldn’t find any dirt.”

  “He was just looking at the pixels. We have to get in the dirt to find dirt. The way investigators used to do it.”

  “How? We were worried that someone there would recognize us.”

  “We do it by stealth.”

  “Again, what’s the plan?”

  “Conditions on the ground will dictate the plan.”

  “Translation—you haven’t thought of a plan yet and you’re buying time until you do.”

  He scowled. “Feel free to jump in with one anytime you want.”

  She sighed and looked out the window. “We can’t screw this up, Sean. There’s too much at stake.”

  “There’s always a lot at stake.”

  “I meant with the kids.”

  “We’ve been down that road before too. And we didn’t let them die. We found them and brought them home safely.”

  “I know. I just hope we can do it this time.”

  A few seconds passed and then Sean said, “Actually, I think we can.”

  She glanced sharply at him. “You just thought of a plan, didn’t you?”

  “I just thought of a plan.”

  CHAPTER

  68

  SEAN DROVE WHILE MICHELLE KEPT an eye out.

  “Nice neighborhood,” he said as they passed by some large homes with expensive landscaping. He looked at a few of the homes. “Very nice.”

  “Yeah, if you go in for that sort of thing,” replied Michelle.