“That line didn’t even work in the fifties,” said Alex. “He’s a public servant with a job to do. Nail Oliver. And while he’s on the run, we’re left as targets.”
“So should we all go into hiding?” Annabelle asked.
Alex said, “That’s pretty much impossible for me to do. But Annabelle, you definitely should dig a deep hole and get in it. Reuben too. Caleb, how about you?”
“Why would Oliver have left us in this impossible situation?” Caleb groused.
“He didn’t have much choice,” Reuben answered. “If we’re right, he popped two giant VIPs on the same day. You don’t go have coffee after that and wait for the SWAT team to tap on your door with a battering ram.”
Caleb shook his head. “Even if Oliver did kill them—and despite the letter he left behind, I bet he didn’t leave any evidence for them to find.”
“Damn it, what point aren’t you getting, Caleb?” Reuben exclaimed. “These guys don’t care about prosecuting his ass. They just want him. They’ll squeeze whatever useful information he has out of him and then put a round in his brain. He was a former government hit man who had to go on the run because Gray and Simpson screwed him over and tried to kill him.” Reuben said this last part while staring at Alex. “Oliver’s been on the run for thirty years. And then they killed Milton. And don’t forget, Harry Finn told us that Simpson admitted that he was the one who ordered the hit on Oliver and his family way back when. If ever a man had a reason to kill somebody it’s Oliver, to hell with what the law says.”
“So they might be afraid of what Oliver might know about past government missions,” Caleb said. “And they’d want to silence him?”
“Now you’re thinking like a librarian,” noted Reuben wryly.
Annabelle said, “But there might be another way, I mean instead of us going underground.”
Alex leaned against the wall. “What do you have in mind?”
“We find Oliver and help him really get away.”
“Forget it, Annabelle. We’d be leading these guys right to him,” protested Alex.
“And besides,” added Reuben, “I’m sure Oliver had a nifty escape plan.”
“Really? No ID. No money. I gave him a credit card. I checked on it. It hasn’t been used in months. He can’t get on a plane. He can only run so far.”
“Before they catch him,” said Reuben quietly.
“Maybe that’s what he wants,” stated Alex. The other three stared at him. “He got Simpson and Gray. He felt terrible guilt for Milton. He may feel he has nothing else to live for. He runs, but not that hard. He knows they’ll catch up to him and he’s prepared for what that means.”
Annabelle said, “I’m not going to let his life end that way.”
“Annabelle, stonewalling the CIA is one thing, but you get mixed up in actively helping Oliver elude the authorities then you’re looking at prison time too. A big chunk of it.”
“I don’t care, Alex. Look what he did for me. He risked everything to help me.”
“He’s done that for all of us,” added Reuben.
“You wouldn’t be here either, Alex,” Annabelle said, eyeing the man. “Except for Oliver.”
Alex sat down on an old desk. “Guys, I hear you, but I’m a federal agent. I can only go so far.”
“We don’t want to get you in trouble, so you don’t have to do anything,” said Annabelle, though her tone was less gracious than her words.
“Except look the other way,” added Reuben.
“How would you even go about finding him?” said Alex.
“That’s for us to figure out,” said Reuben coldly. He glanced over at Caleb. “You’re a federal employee too, but are you in?”
Caleb nodded. “I’m in.”
Alex, his features grim, rose. “Well, I guess this is where we part company. Good luck.”
“Alex—” Annabelle began, but the door had already closed behind him.
The three remaining members of the Camel Club simply looked at each other.
“Screw him,” exclaimed Reuben. “So how do we find Oliver?”
She gazed at him. “The fox is on the hunt, right?”
“Right. So?”
“So we follow the fox.”
“You have a plan?”
“I always have a plan.”
“Annabelle, girl, I love you.”
CHAPTER 24
STONE WAS ABOUT TO APPROACH Danny Riker when someone else appeared from the other side of the graveyard. Stone shrank down behind the stone wall as the man stepped clear of the shadows and into the moonlight. At first, Stone thought the big fellow was going to attack Danny, so stealthy was his approach. Indeed, Stone was preparing to spring out when the other man gently touched Danny on the shoulder.
“Come on, boy, no good you being here.”
Danny looked up into the face of Sheriff Tyree, who bent down to help him up.
“Not right. Ain’t right,” Danny sputtered, as he leaned against the large frame of the lawman.
“A lot in life isn’t fair, Danny. But you can’t let it eat you up, boy.”
“I want to die.”
Tyree slapped Danny across the face. “Don’t let me never hear you say that again, Danny. The girl’s dead. Nothing you can do will bring her back.”
He pointed at the dirt. “You call that fair?”
“You get your head on straight. She had a choice. She killed herself. This ain’t doing nobody any good. Now you want me to give you a ride home?”
Danny wiped his face and shook his head. “You’re a stupid man if you think that,” he snapped.
Tyree studied him. “You know something I don’t?”
“I know lots you don’t. So what? Ain’t worth shit what I know.”
“I mean about Debby?”
Danny dropped his head and his defiant tone. “No. I don’t know nothing. Just talking is all. Talking and saying nothing, really.”
“You said I was stupid if I believed that. What, that she killed herself?”
“You putting words in my mouth now, Sheriff,” Danny said, his face whitening a bit.
“I just want to hear what you have to say.”
In response, Danny turned and walked off.
“Danny, you come back here.”
“Stop yelling, Sheriff, you’ll wake the dead.”
“Right now, boy.”
“I’m not a boy, Tyree, in case you hadn’t noticed.” Danny turned to look at him. “And unless you want to put a bullet in my back, I’m going home.”
Tyree laid a hand on top of his pistol as Stone stooped as low as he could. He didn’t want to give either man a chance to spot him.
He waited for Danny to disappear down the road and then watched as Tyree stalked back to his patrol car parked nearby and drove back toward town.
Should I just leave now? Why wait until morning?
Yet Stone walked to town and got a room at the tiny house Danny had recommended. He climbed the stairs, put his bag away and sat on the soft bed and stared out the window toward the main street of Divine.
What he’d seen at the graveyard had puzzled him. Had Danny been in love with Debby Randolph? Had she killed herself? Why had Danny left and then come back?
“It’s not my problem,” Stone finally said aloud, surprising himself with the force of the words. He checked his watch. It was nearly ten o’clock. He had a small transistor radio in his bag. He pulled it out and turned it on. It took some twisting of the tuner knob, but he finally found a station that had a national news roundup program at the top of the hour. He sat back on his bed. The murders weren’t the lead story, but they were a close second to another salmonella outbreak in some vegetables.
The announcer’s voice seemed breathless as he recounted the latest on the high-level D.C. killings.
“The FBI and Homeland Security have combined their efforts in this investigation. The murders of Senator Roger Simpson and intelligence head Carter Gray are definitely connected and
are apparently tied to events from decades ago when both men worked at the CIA. The killer is reportedly a former colleague of the two men and was believed to have died years ago. Authorities are watching all airports, train and bus stations and border crossings. We will bring you more developments as they break in what is shaping up to be the manhunt of the decade.”
Stone turned off the radio, rose and stared out the window once more. They hadn’t announced the name of the killer, but they might as well have.
They know it was John Carr and they know what I look like and they have every escape route bottled up.
He had never really dwelled on his eventual capture. He even imagined that he might make it to New Orleans, start a new life and live out the rest of his years in peaceful obscurity. But that was apparently not to be. The one thing that bothered him was that everyone would believe him to be a criminal. Was revenge always wrong? Was righting an injustice outside the law never condonable? He knew the answer to those questions. He would never have the luxury of facing a judge and jury. They would never let him because then he could tell his side of the story. No, that could never be allowed.
Stone put on his jacket. He needed air. He needed to think. Could he even leave Divine now? He should call Reuben, but he would have to wait until tomorrow. Now he just wanted to walk in the darkness and peace of Divine. And think.
He reached the main street, turned right and walked at a brisk pace. He soon left the little downtown area behind. The trees grew thicker and the lights of the small houses that dotted the perimeter of Divine finally disappeared.
Five minutes later Stone had decided to turn back when the scream reached him. It was from up ahead. It was a man. And he sounded beyond terrified.
Stone started to run.
CHAPTER 25
AFTER LEAVING Leroy’s place in Maryland Knox did not drive home. One question had been bothering him so badly that he had to have an answer. He headed not for Langley, but for a nondescript building in the heart of Washington. He’d called ahead and was admitted without issue, what with his military background and government credentials.
He entered a vast room filled with long, scarred tables where gray-haired men, probably grizzled vets of past wars, along with some bow-tied historians, sat reading through piles of yellowed documents. It was windowless and seemed nearly airless as well. As Knox looked around, the one emotion he sensed was misery. This place contained the recorded and too brief lives and violent deaths of far more people than one would ever want to think about.
The main collection center for U.S. Army records was in St. Louis. Unless you were next of kin, to get access to an enlisted person’s complete service record there required either that person’s permission or a court order. However, Knox had learned something unknown to most people: The St. Louis facility didn’t have all the records. There were some in D.C.—and, indeed, copies of some of the ones housed in St. Louis. And they weren’t simply records of enlisted personnel. Here were housed documents chronicling America’s wars. That was why many historians came here to do research, many with FOIA requests in hand, since the military only reluctantly revealed anything about itself.
Many of the records he wanted to look at had not been computerized yet, but some had. Still, after Knox showed his creds, the attendant was able to pull the boxes he wanted very quickly and showed him how to access the computerized files. His butt parked in front of a PC, Knox started with the digital ones first, flicking from screen to screen. He had a hunch and he wanted to see if it was true. What had been bugging him was why Macklin Hayes would want to get to John Carr so badly. If Carr had killed Simpson and Gray, he was now on the run. He was not going to hold a press conference and start blabbing about secrets from the past. Knox could understand Hayes wanting him to nail Carr before the police did. If the cops caught up to Carr he might start talking in exchange for a deal. But Hayes had also said that the cops had been put on a short leash on this investigation, giving Knox, in essence, a clear field in which to operate. And even if the police somehow got to Carr first, the CIA could, like Hayes had said, just swoop in and take him away under cover of national security interests. Carr would never even reach a press conference or make a phone call to his lawyer.
So why the all-out necessity to get this guy? Aside from the moral issue of letting a killer escape justice, in some ways letting him go away and die peacefully made the most sense strategically. The bottom line was, Hayes was acting somewhat irrationally and he was not an irrational man. There had to be another reason.
Knox stared at the screen, reading the military records of the men and women who had served in Vietnam. He exhausted the digital trail and had to resort to the boxes after consulting with another attendant who helped him narrow his area of search. He went through thirty of the boxes without success. He was about to call it a day when his hand gripped a sheaf of papers, the top page getting his immediate attention.
As Knox leaned forward, the rest of the room seemed to slowly disappear around him. He was reading the official history of a soldier named John Carr, an enlisted man who’d quickly risen to the rank of sergeant. The account Knox was enthralled with was Carr’s heroic actions during one five-hour period nearly forty years ago.
Outnumbered dozens to one, Carr had almost single-handedly turned back an attack by the enemy, saving his company and carrying several of his wounded comrades to safety on his back. He’d killed at least ten enemy soldiers, several in hand-to-hand fighting. Then he’d manned a machine-gun nest to hold back the North Vietnamese while mortar and rifle rounds hit all around him. He’d left that post to radio in air support to allow his men to retreat safely. Only then had he walked off the battlefield drenched in his own blood and permanently scarred by bullet and machete wounds. Knox had experienced combat in those jungles and knew the confusion and horror that such confrontations almost always held. He’d been wounded. He’d been scarred. He’d been routed in action thinking this was surely his last day on earth. And he’d been part of successful attacks in the last days of America’s participation in that war in Southeast Asia, although by that time little victories in the field meant nothing. If they ever did.
Yet Knox had never read or heard of any soldier doing what Carr had done that day. It was beyond miraculous. It was beyond human, in fact. His respect, along with his fear of the man, notched upward even more.
With such heroism there must’ve been reward. The military was often slow in many ways, but it was quick at awarding bravery and selflessness in the field if for no other reason than to inspire other soldiers. And such accounts also made for great PR. The extraordinary heroism and extreme gallantry Carr had demonstrated that day not only easily qualified him for the Distinguished Service Cross, the second highest award the army could bestow, but, in Knox’s judgment, it should have earned him the country’s highest award for military heroism, the Medal of Honor. John Carr a Medal of Honor winner? Hayes had not mentioned any of that in his briefing. Nor had that piece of background made its way into press accounts when the man’s grave had been dug up at Arlington.
Knox flipped through page after page and explored several more boxes before he was able to piece the story together.
Carr’s Purple Hearts could not be denied him because the wounds alone were proof enough. All told, he received four of them, counting injuries received in other battles. Then there had been talk of awarding him a Bronze Star, but the date of this document was long after the fact of Carr’s miraculous actions in the field. And the Bronze Star—while certainly prestigious—didn’t come close to recognizing what the man had done, Knox felt. The Bronze was a bit of a hybrid in Knox’s mind. It could be given out for bravery in battle with a Valor device attached, but also for acts of merit or meritorious service. The Silver Star, Distinguished Service Cross, and Medal of Honor, the acknowledged triumvirate of recognition for the fighting soldier, were for bravery and heroism in combat, pure and simple.
He finally found a sheaf of docu
ments showing that Carr’s immediate superior had recommended Stone for the Medal of Honor. The man had filled out all the requisite documents and assembled all the required proofs and eyewitness accounts. He’d then sent it up the chain of command. The date on the documents showed it to be shortly after Carr’s actions in the field, long before the documents talking about awarding him the Bronze Star. What the hell was going on?
And nothing had happened. It apparently had stalled out at that point. Knox could find no other documents that touched on it. But why? It was a perfect story. The man was a hero. Instead Carr had disappeared from the ranks shortly thereafter. Knox thought he knew why. That’s when he’d been enlisted by the CIA for its Triple Six Division. The spooks, Knox was aware, often trolled for their assassins in the ranks of the military’s best.
He put the documents back in the box. And that’s when he noticed it. Two pieces of paper stapled together that had slid down in between the interior flap of the box and the exterior cardboard wall. Knox almost didn’t read it, so disgusted was he at the military’s injustice to a man who should have been one of the most legendary recipients of its highest award.
But Knox did reach for the papers.
It was an order, a simple one. It shut off any further consideration of John Carr receiving the Medal of Honor or any other commendation. As Knox read through the document it was filled with official mumbo jumbo about unreliable evidence and inconsistent eyewitness accounts and conflicting background documentation. It made no sense at all until Knox’s gaze reached the signature line where the name of the officer appeared.
Major Macklin D. Hayes.
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