He shook his head, then nodded, then shrugged. “I really couldn’t get a read on him, Cap’n.”
I thanked Bug and told him to call us if he got anything else.
“So, what d’you think, Boss?” asked Bunny. “Crow one of the good guys or one of the bad guys?”
“No way to tell. We’re not even sure we have any bad guys in this. Burke could be shacked up with some chick.”
“And doing what?” asked Top. “Making crank calls to the AIC?”
“And terrorists?” added Bunny.
I grinned. “Yeah, yeah.”
We drove through the town, which takes less time than it does to tell it. Couple of stoplights. Rows of craft shops. A surprising number of cafes and bars, though most of them looked run down. More for drinking than eating, I thought. The biggest intersection had the Terrance Wolfe Memorial Medical Center across the street from the Saul Weinstock Ball Field. The hospital looked new; the ball field was overgrown, and a hundred crows huddled in a row along the chain link fence. Ditto for the hospital.
I noted it away and kept driving. The place was starting to get to me, and that was weird because I worked a lot of shifts in West Baltimore, which is probably the most depressing place on earth. Poverty screamed at you from every street corner, and there was a tragic blend of desperation and hopelessness in the eyes of every child. And yet, this little town had a darker tone to it, and my overactive imagination wondered if the storm clouds ever let the sun shine down. Looking at these streets was like watching the sluggish flow of a polluted river. You know that there’s life beneath the grime and the toxicity, but at the same time you feel that life could not exist there.
We left town and turned back onto Route A-32 as it plunged south toward the Delaware River. This was the large part of the township, occupied for the first mile by new suburban infill—with cookie-cutter development units, many still under construction, and overbuilt McMansions. More than three quarters of the houses had FOR SALE signs staked into the lawns. A few were unfinished skeletons draped in tarps that looked like body bags.
Then we were out into the farm country and the atmosphere changed subtly, from something dying to something still clinging to life. Big farms, too, like the kind you expect to see more in the Midwest. Thousands of acres of land, miles between houses. Endless rows of waving green corn, fields bright with pumpkins, and row upon row of vegetables. A paint-faded yellow tractor chugged along the side of the road, driven by an ancient man in blue coveralls. He smoked a cheap pipe that he took out of his mouth to salute us as we went by.
“We just drive into the nineteen forties?” asked Bunny.
“Pretty much.”
Mist, as thick and white as tear gas, slowly boiled up from gullies and hollows as the cooler air under the storm mixed with the August heat.
The GPS told us that we were coming up on our turn.
The lane onto which I’d turned ran straight as a rifle barrel from the road, through a fence of rough-cute rails, to the front door of a Cape Cod that looked as out of place here in Pine Deep as a sequined thong looks on a nun. Heavy oaks lined the road, and the big front lawn was dark with thick, cool summer grass.
“Okay, gentlemen,” I said softly. “Place should be empty, and except for a brief walk-through by the handler, no one else will have disturbed the crime scene.”
“Wait,” said Top, “you want Farmboy and me to play Sherlock Holmes?”
“We’re just doing a cursory examination. If we find anything of substance we’ll ship it off.”
“To where? CSI: Twilight Zone?”
I rolled the car to a slow stop in a turnaround in front of the house. The garage was detached except for a pitched roof that connected it to the main house. A five-year-old Honda Civic was parked in that slot. The garage door was closed.
“Looks nice and quiet,” Bunny said as he got out, the big shotgun in his hands.
We split up. Bunny and Top circled around to the back and side entrances. I took the front door. We had our earbuds in place, everyone tuned into the team channel.
“On two,” I said. I counted down and then kicked the door.
The door whipped inward with a crack, and as I entered, gun up and out in a two-handed shooter’s grip, I heard the back door bang open, and then the side door that connected to the garage breezeway. We were moving fast, yelling at the top of our voices—at whoever might be in the house and at each other as we cleared room after room.
Then it was quiet again as we drifted together in the living room, holstering our guns and exhaling slowly. No one felt the need to comment on the fact that the place was empty. It was now our job to determine how it came to be empty.
“You take the bedrooms,” I said to Bunny. “Observe before you touch.”
He was a professional soldier, not a cop. There were no smartass remarks when being given straight orders that could remind him how to do his job.
“Why don’t I take the garage and around the outside?” asked Top, and off he went.
I stood alone in the living room and waited for the crime scene to tell me its story. If, indeed, it was a crime scene.
The doors and windows were properly closed and locked from inside. I’d had to kick the door, and a quick examination showed that the deadbolt had been engaged. Same went for the side and back doors. I went upstairs and checked those windows. Locked. Cellar door was locked and the windows were block glass.
Back in the living room I saw a laptop case by the couch, and one of those padded lap tables. The case was empty. The power cable and mouse were there, but the machine itself was gone.
Significant.
The question was…was Simon Burke crazy enough to actually write his novel about the unstoppable terrorist plot?
I hadn’t met him, but I had read his psych evaluations. He had that dangerous blend of overblown ego and deep insecurity that creates a person who feels that any idea he has is of world-shaking importance and must therefore be shared with the whole world. They typically lack perspective, and everything I’d read in Burke’s case file told me that he was one of those. Probably not a bad person, but not the kind you’d want to be caught in a stalled elevator with. Only one of you would walk out alive.
So…where was he?
My cell rang, and I flipped it open. The screen read UNKNOWN CALLER.
That’s…pretty unsettling. Our phone system is run through MindReader, which is wired in everywhere. There are no callers unknown to MindReader.
It kept ringing. Before I answered it I pulled a little doohickey the size of a matchbox from a pocket, unspooled its wire, plugged the lead into the phone and pressed the CONNECT button. MindReader would race down the phone lines in a millisecond and begin reading the computer and sim card in the other phone. One of Mr. Sin’s toys. He did not like surprises.
It rang a third time and I punched the button.
“Hello?”
“Joe?”
“Who’s calling, please?”
“Joe? Is this Joe Ledger?”
“Sir, please identify yourself.”
“It’s me, Joe.”
“Who?” Though I thought I already knew.
“Simon Burke.” He paused and gave a nervous little laugh. “Guess you’ve been looking for me.”
“Where are you, Mr. Burke?”
“C’mon, Joe, cut the ‘Mister’ stuff. Mr. Burke was my dad, and he was kind of a dick.”
I looked through the window at the white fog swirling from the cornfields. It was so thick you couldn’t see the dirt. Between the black storm clouds and the ground fog, visibility was dropping pretty fast. That wasn’t good. I said, “You told me that same joke the first time I met you.”
“Did I?”
“Can you verify where we first met?”
“Sure,” he said. “Central District police station on East Baltimore Street.”
“Okay,” I said, “good to hear your voice, Simon. You want to tell me where the hell you are?”
He laughed. “Too far away for you to come get me. At least right now.”
I turned away from the window just as tendrils of fog began caressing the glass. “We need to get you back into protective custody, Simon.”
“Joe,” he said, “listen…I’m sorry for doing this to you.”
“Doing what?” When he didn’t answer I said, “We know about the cell phones, Simon.”
“Yeah…I guessed you’d figure it out. I just thought Church would send more people. I…I didn’t know it would be just three of you.”
My mouth went dry.
“Jesus Christ, Simon, what did you do?”
There was a sound. It might have been a sob, though it sounded strangely like bubbles escaping through mud. “Look…I was getting tired of waiting…and I knew that you’d be able to handle just about anything. So…I started reaching out to….”
“To who?”
“Potential buyers.”
“Oh…Christ….why?”
“I wanted to draw them in, just like the FBI said they were going to do. Only the Feds were taking way too much time. I was wasting my life away in this crappy little town.”
“Simon….”
“I offered to sell my plot. I…reached out to several buyers and told them that I had it all written down, and that they had to bring two million in unmarked bills. Don’t worry, I’d have turned over the cash. I just needed it to look and feel real to them. And they bought it, too. They thought I was selling out.”
“Who’s bringing the money, Simon?”
“All of them.”
“What do you mean? Damn it, Simon, how many buyers did you contact?”
“A lot.”
“Simon….”
“Six,” he said in a small and broken voice. “There are six teams of buyers. I told them to meet me at the house. I figured they’d get there and start shooting each other. It would be like a movie. I could sell that scenario. I could make a bestseller out of it…I could make a movie out of it…”
“Simon, when are the shooters expected here?”
“When? Joe…that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. That’s why I was sorry it was just the three of you. They’re already here. I…I didn’t mean to kill you.”
And the windows exploded in under a hail of high-caliber bullets.
Chap. 6
The Safe House
Pine Deep, Pennsylvania
August 16; 6:41 p.m.
I dove for cover behind the couch. It wasn’t a good dive and it wasn’t pretty, but it got me low and out of the line of fire. Then I tried to melt right into the carpet. High-caliber rounds were chewing the couch to splinters and threads. The air above me was filled with thunder. Plaster and chunks of wall lath rained down on me.
The shots seemed continuous, so there had to be multiple shooters. They were firing full auto, and even with a high-capacity magazine it only takes a couple of seconds to burn through the entire clip.
I shimmied sideways, trying to put the edge of the stone fireplace between me and the shooters. I had my Beretta out, but the barrage was so intense that I couldn’t risk a shot.
Then the sound changed. There were new sounds. The hollow pok-pok-pok of small-arms fire and the rhythmic boom of a shotgun. Those sounds were farther away.
Top and Bunny returning fire.
The automatic gunfire swept away from me and split as the shooters focused on these two new targets. That gave me my moment, and I was up and running, pistol out. There was nothing left of the door except splintered wood and glass through which the fog rolled like a slow-motion tide. I went through it fast, feeling the splinters claw at my sleeves and thighs. I was firing before I set foot outside.
In combat you see more, process more, and all of it happens fast. That’s a skill set you learn quick or you get killed. As I came out of the house I saw five men standing in a loose shooting line in the turnaround. The fog was thick enough to cover them to midthigh. They were dark-skinned. Middle Eastern for sure, though from that distance I couldn’t tell from where. All four of them carried AK47s with banana-clips. Three were facing the garage, firing steadily at it; the other two were standing wide-legged as they leaned back to fire at the second floor.
I emptied my magazine into them. I saw blood puff out in little clouds of red mist as two of them staggered backward and fell, vanishing into the fog. Another one took a round through the cheek. Because he was shouting, the bullet went through both cheeks and left the teeth untouched. He was screaming louder as he wheeled around toward me.
I fired my last two rounds into his chest, and my slide locked back.
The remaining shooters opened up on me, and I dove behind the armored SUV. Their bullets pinged off of the heavy skin and smoked the window before ricocheting high into the sky.
The shooters wanted me so badly they forgot, in that one fatal instant, about Top and Bunny.
Bunny spun out a side door to the garage and fired three rounds with the shotgun, catching the left-hand shooter in the chest and face. Top leaned out of the second floor window and put half a magazine into the last shooter.
As the last one fell I swapped out the magazine in my Beretta and crept to the edge of the car. Simon Burke had said that there were six buyers. Five men lay sprawled on the bloody gravel.
Where was the sixth…?
I tapped my ear bud. “We have one more hostile,” I began, but Top cut me off.
“Negative, Cowboy,” he said, using my combat call sign, “we have multiple hostiles inbound.”
I turned and saw the fog swirling around two cars barreling down the long dirt road. Then there was a roar to my right and I saw another pair of vehicles—ATVs with oversized tires—crashing our way through the cornfields.
“Where’s this fog coming from?” demanded Top. “Can’t see worth a damn?”
“I got a team coming in on foot,” called Bunny. “Behind the house, running along a drainage ditch. Can’t make out numbers with that mist out there. No, wait…there’s a second team farther back in the corner. Damn! A third at nine o’clock to the front door. Four men in black. Geez…Boss…we’re under siege here. We need backup.”
We needed an army, but we weren’t likely to get one. The closest help was the naval airbase in Willow Grove. Half an hour at least.
With a sinking heart I understood the enormity of what Simon Burke had done. Not six buyers. Six teams of buyers. Conservative estimate—twenty men. Depressing estimate—thirty.
Coming straight at us.
Chap. 7
The Safe House
Pine Deep, Pennsylvania
August 16; 6:46 p.m.
We needed five minutes. With five minutes we could have fitted out with Kevlar and ballistic helmets, strapped on vests heavy with fresh magazines, picked optimum shooting positions, and turned the whole farm into a killbox.
We needed five damn minutes.
We had thirty seconds.
“Talk to me, Cowboy,” said Top.
“Sergeant Rock and Jolly Green,” I barked. “Converge on me. Living room. Now.”
I spun around, yanked open the door of the SUV, ground the key in the starter, spun the wheel and stamped down. The big machine took an awkward, ugly lurch, then found footing and rolled heavily away from the house. I went completely around the roundabout, then jerked the wheel over and put the pedal to the floor as I aimed for the front door. The SUV punched a truck-sized hole through the shattered doorway, ripped across the living room floor and slammed into the stairs with enough force to rock the house to its foundations. I hadn’t had time to buckle up for safety, so I bashed forward and backward. I could taste blood in my mouth as I bailed out of the driver’s seat and ran to the back.
“Sergeant Rock, coming in!” yelled Top as he pounded down the stairs. He vaulted the wreckage of the bottom steps, ran across the hood, onto the roof, and dropped with a grunt into a squat next to me. He yelped in pain as his forty-year-old knees took the impact, b
ut he sucked it up and staggered to me as I raised the back hatch.
“Coming in!” yelled Bunny, and then he was there, coming at us from the kitchen.
I clumsied open the gun lockers, and immediately six pairs of hands reached for the toys. I grabbed a bag of loaded magazines and an M4 and peeled away.
“Yo!” Top barked and tossed another bag to me. “Party favors!”
I snatched it out of the air and flashed him a grin. He grinned back. This was a total nightmare scenario, and only an insane oddsmaker would give us one in fifty on getting out of this. So…might as well enjoy it.
“Where, Boss?” asked Bunny.
“Kitchen. The fog might work for us. It’ll confuse everything out there. Go!”
“On it.” He shoved five drum magazines for the shotgun into a bag and slung it over his shoulder. Then he was gone, running to the kitchen.
“Top,” I said, “upstairs.”
“Why you keep making the old guy run up and down stairs?”
We both laughed.
He grabbed his gear and climbed over the wreckage.
I glanced through the broken window. The lead car was almost to the roundabout. It had slowed, though, and I figured that the converging teams were suddenly aware of one another. Who knows, I thought, maybe Burke was right. Maybe they’d slaughter each other while Top, Bunny and I stayed in here and played cribbage.
And maybe tomorrow I’d wake up looking like Brad Pitt. About as much chance of that.
I heard voices shouting and car doors slamming.
Then gunshots.
The first rounds were fired away from us, off to my three o’clock, the direction of the team on ATVs.
Then three other guns opened up on the house.
So much for cribbage.
Chap. 8
The Safe House
Pine Deep, Pennsylvania
August 16; 6:51 p.m.
It became hell.
A swirling surreal white hell, with the red flashes of muzzle fire filtered by thick fog, and all sounds muted to strangeness. Overhead the storm grumbled and growled, but no rain fell.
Maybe one of these days I’ll look back on that ten minutes under the August sun in backwoods Pennsylvania and laugh about it. Maybe it’ll become one of those anecdotes soldiers tell when they want to story-top the last guy. Or, maybe when I think about it I’ll get the shakes and go crawling off to find a bottle.
Joe Ledger Page 9