***
“Do you think we have them all?” Ruth strained to look past the fire and into the trees.
“Oh, yeah. Four on the ground and what’s left of two more of them in the chopper. I only saw one door open which means they all had to jump from the one facing us. So, that’s the lot.”
Ruth looked at the four men they’d zip-tied and laid side by side like cordwood on the ground. “This is horrible, Ike. My God, what have we done?” Ruth gulped for some air. The realization of what had just taken place hit her like a punch to the solar plexus. “I think I might be sick.”
“We did what we had to do. It’s not a pretty sight, but consider the alternatives. You saw the weapons they were packing. A single burst from any one of those imported pieces and the two of us would be hard to identify except by our DNA. Where the hell is Stone? He had to have heard the blast at least.”
Ruth gasped and choked.
“So, go right ahead and be sick. It’s the usual reaction to stuff like this. Hell, I might even join you.”
Ruth staggered to one side away from the light. She bent forward and took a deep breath. An arm snaked around her throat and jerked her upright. Whoever had her in his grip shoved and pushed her back toward the light and Ike.
“Schwartz,” the owner of the arm said. “Drop your weapon.”
Ike spun toward the voice. A man he did not recognize had his arm around Ruth’s neck and, more importantly, a pistol at her temple. Ike hesitated and then let his pistol fall to the ground.
“You are an embarrassment to me, you know,” the man said.
“How’s that?” Ike had no idea who the man was or how he had managed to come up on them, but he hoped he could make him talk long enough, or at least until he’d maneuvered him away from Ruth.
“You really don’t know?”
“Sorry, I can’t even guess who you are or why these idiots flew in to make a mess of the island. Maybe you would like to enlighten me.”
The man snorted and dragged Ruth, his gun still planted against her head, next to the recumbent figures on the ground.
“Hey,” one of them rasped. “Cut us loose, Doc.”
“Sure, no problem.”
In quick succession he put a bullet in the head of each of the trussed figures on the ground.
Ruth threw up on his sleeve. He shoved her away with a curse. She staggered over to stand next to Ike.
The man shook his sleeve and cursed some more. “You’re telling me you don’t recognize me at all?” the man said.
“No clue.” Ike’s eyes swept the perimeter for help.
“If you are looking for the policeman who was watching the shoreline, forget it. I shot him. He won’t be coming. In fact, no one is coming. Your pal Garland is still in Denver and his boss is in Washington with his hands tied in red tape and protocol. It will just be the three of us.”
Ike moved to put himself in front of Ruth.
“That won’t do you any good, Schwartz. You’re both toast, either way.”
Ruth crouched behind him. “Ike?”
“It’s okay, Ruth.” He tried to be taller, wider to keep her out of the man’s sights. “As long as we’re going to be toast, would you tell me who you are and why?”
“Daniel Osborn.”
“Doesn’t ring any bells.”
“Too bad for you. Everyone should know why they die. You’re going to because I can’t take the chance that you won’t eventually remember me. Now, I’ll say goodbye. I have a boat to meet.”
Ruth stepped out from behind Ike and stuck out her chin. “You know what, buster? I’m damned well sick and tired of this crap. First a damned helicopter comes in with these jerks on a mission to kill us, and now you. All I wanted is a little peace and quiet and to mind my own business, but oh no, do I get it? No! What I get is idiots trying to run me down with a truck, or shoot me from a helicopter, and now you. Well, I am done here. If you’re going to shoot, do it and get it over with. Otherwise, I’m going to kick you in the—” Ike shoved Ruth to the ground as the shooter leveled the pistol at her.
Chapter Forty-seven
The shot, when it came, was not the pop Ike expected from a gun with a noise suppressor still attached, but an honest to God bang from a Colt .45 automatic. Osborn’s head jerked sideways. He staggered forward and fell to the ground at their feet. Ike stared first at Osborn and then at an elderly woman who stepped out of the shadows and into the light, a large pistol in her hand.
“This place stinks,” she said. “I hate the smell of burning kerosene. Sorry it took me so long to get here, Ike.” She looked around at the wreckage, the bodies and then leaned forward to help Ruth to her feet. “Maybe just as well I did. Any earlier he’d have done me, too.”
“My God is that you, Alex? Jesus! I thought you were dead.”
Ruth grabbed at Ike’s arm and heaved herself upright. “Ike, how do you know this woman?”
“She and I sometimes worked together back in my previous life. Alex Barr was a senior agent and a legend.”
The woman grinned. “No, no, you have to be dead to be a legend, and, as you must have noticed, I am still on the right side of the sod, so I don’t qualify. Ike, I guess we have some catching up to do.”
“You were sent to keep an eye on Archie Whitlock?”
“Is that who it was? Didn’t do such a hot job, did I?”
“You never worked with Archie?”
“No. That’s why the director sent me I guess. That and the fact that little old ladies tend to be discounted in serious situations and make good cover. Also, he knew that retirement did not sit well with me, so he asked if I would make myself useful. I said I would, for old time’s sake, you understand. It turned out I was not such a good babysitter, though.”
“How come I never saw you? It might have helped earlier.”
“After the baby went down, I stayed in the shadows. If they got curious and started interviewing people, it wouldn’t do to have the local cops sniffing around. I planned to leave but the boss said stay in place in case a clean-up crew other than our people dropped in.”
“If you had ventured out and spotted me, maybe none of this would have happened.”
“Maybe. Are you sure about that? I don’t know what the hell was going on here, but the director sent me out the door to look for you only a little over an hour ago.”
“He probably would have let me swing even if you’d spotted me.”
“Your call. I wouldn’t know. So, am I correct in thinking you are married?”
“Engaged, soon to be, more like.”
Ruth turned away “Ike I…never mind. Excuse me, but this has been a really bad day.” She threw up a second time.
Because she was otherwise engaged, she missed the whine of another set of twin engines belonging to a second helicopter that now drifted toward them over the treetops. This one had all of its lights on all the way in.
“I don’t believe this,” Ike muttered.
***
Eden Saint Clare did not wake up when the first helicopter flew low over the cottage rooftop, nor the second one. She did not wake up when an explosion rattled the windows nor when gun fire, like hail hitting a tin roof, sent the indigenous wildlife stampeding to the other end of the island. When the front door slammed open and a man crashed in and fell face down in the foyer, she woke and went on high alert. She snatched up her cell phone and punched in 9-1-1. Her adrenaline rush nearly brought on a cardiac accident. At any rate, that’s how she would remember it later.
“Come on, come on,” she muttered through chattering teeth. “What’s the hold-up?” She looked at the phone and then remembered that there was no service on the island. “Damn, of all the times to be rustic and uncomplicated.”
She had two choices: retreat out the back door or make a dash over the man and out the front. The body had not moved since its dramatic entrance. She took a cautious step closer. She could see he wore a uniform with what appeared to be insignia that mig
ht belong to a police officer. She chanced it, stepped over the recumbent man, and out onto the porch.
***
The second helicopter was clearly marked as belonging to the Maine National Guard. Ike, who had started to retrieve his pistol, stepped over to Ruth and lifted her upright instead. He pulled out a nearly clean handkerchief and guided her shaking hand to wipe her face. The chopper hovered a foot or two off the ground. The wash from its rotor fanned the flames which by now had spread to several bushes and a small pine tree. Figures, some in black, jumped free from the copter’s doors and then it veered off, gained altitude, and disappeared over the treetops.
Ruth dropped her head on Ike’s shoulder. “Are these more people we have to shoot?”
“No, it’s the cavalry, a little late, but finally here and in force. Hello, Charlie, what kept you?”
“If that’s Charlie Garland, I want my gun. I’m going to shoot the bastard.”
“I’m happy to see you too, Ruth. Have you met the director of the CIA?”
“Shoot him first,” she mumbled and leaned heavily on Ike.
Ike scooped Ruth up in his arms and headed toward the cottage. “I hope someone will eventually tell me what the hell happened here, but right now, this lady has had a very busy day and it is way past her bed time. Oh, yeah, whoever this guy was—Osborn—he said he had a boat to meet. You might want to look at the bottom of the steps over on the east side near Archie’s place. Also, he said he shot a policeman. That would be Deputy Stone. While you’re at it, you should try to find him. That is, as long as you are here on clean-up duty. I’d love to stay and hear how you plan to explain all this, but it will have to wait. Ruth and I are going home.” He started down the path.
The director’s aide began barking orders to the chopper crew. It reappeared and headed northeast. A few moments later the braaat of .50 caliber machine gun bullets pumped from the helo’s Gatling could be heard coming from vicinity of Cliffside. So much for Osborn’s alternate escape.
“Okay,” the director yelled, “You four, put out the fire and then pack these stiffs up and load them in the chopper when it comes back.”
“What about Osborn?” Charlie asked.
“Toss him in the downed bird and let him toast for a while. I want it to look a little like an accident.”
“Sir?”
“Forget that. Toss him in with the others. Then take a magnet to what’s left of the bird’s avionics. When the FTSB investigators arrive I want them to be able to corroborate with a straight face that this happened to a chopper which had strayed off course.”
“An accident? You really think they will buy that?” Ike asked.
“They will have to buy what we’re selling. As of this minute Daniel Osborn chartered a flight from the Five One Star Corporation to fly him into the woods for a weekend of moose hunting. Somehow the guidance equipment failed and the crew flew northeast instead of north-northeast. I will have to report this to the President, of course, and his aide. Very tragic; the country has lost a great man.”
Ike had heard enough. He continued his walk away from the voices and toward the cottage.
Fifteen yards further on Ruth lifted her head. “Is it just me or do you hear someone calling my name?”
“Sounds like it.”
Ike made out a figure standing on the front porch. “I don’t believe this.”
“You don’t believe what?”
“I don’t believe that’s your mother standing on your porch yelling for help.”
“This has to be really a bad dream. Please, please wake me up right now, Ike. I don’t think I can take anymore.”
Chapter Forty-eight
Eden raced forward and met them on the path. She gasped something that could have been either “denim” or “dead man.”
“Mother, what ? Denim? What the hell are you doing here?”
“There’s a dead man in the hallway. Come inside and see.”
At the front door, Eden pointed to Tom Stone lying flat on his face in the foyer. “He is dead, isn’t he?”
Ike dropped to one knee and felt for Stone’s carotid pulse. “He’s alive and his pulse is reasonably strong. He’ll live. We can assume Osborn didn’t have time to finish him off. But now he becomes another problem for the director to solve.” He rolled Stone over and made a crude pressure dressing for the deputy’s chest wound.
“Who?” Eden’s expression kaleidoscoped from fearful to baffled and back again as she peered at the wounded policeman, then Ike, and Ruth.
“Which who? This is Deputy Stone from the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office. The director is from the CIA.”
Ruth sagged in Ike’s arms. “Ike, I need to sit.”
“Right. Sit and drink something. Eden, if you haven’t already done so, you will find the fixings for drinks in the kitchen. I need to sort out the deputy and light some lamps. When you’re done, you might want to see if there is anything worth eating in the fridge. I’ll fire up the generator and we can at least have some toast and peanut butter.”
“You have a generator and electricity?”
“We do.”
‘Wish I’d known that when I got here. Is anyone going to tell me what’s going on?”
“Later. Take care of your daughter. She’s had a bad night and then you can tell us what you’re doing here as well.”
“Since you ask, I—”
“Not now. Drinks and food.”
Ike built up the fire in the parlor and had Ruth swaddled in blankets and a drink in hand when the director and Charlie stomped across the porch and into the house. Eden paused in her clucking over Ruth long enough to shoot Charlie a dirty look. She seemed singularly unimpressed to be in the presence of the director of the CIA.
“Another spook,” she snorted and sat next to Ruth who, Ike believed, was showing the first signs of post-traumatic shock disorder. What they’d gone through would shake up a seasoned combat veteran. The effects of adrenaline after-burn were evident in her pallor and clammy skin. He substituted cups of cocoa for the bourbon and water. It seemed to help. She sat a little straighter and some of the color returned to her cheeks. After a moment she glared at the director.
“Someone in this room owes me and Ike an explanation.”A bandaged and very sore, but recovering, Deputy Stone sat upright in his chair and groaned. “And I think that goes for Tom Stone too. How are you, Deputy?”
“I’m hurt and I am embarrassed and I would very much like to know what the hell happened here tonight.” Stone leaned back against the wall and fainted.
“You’ll need to do something about him, you know.”
The director opened his sat-phone and called the helicopter back. “I gather he is bright and willing, perhaps even recruitable. We’ll call it a matter of national security and that should handle both the young man and his boss. Where were we?”
“An explanation why we were in this mess in the first place seems to be the question hanging in the air. We’d all like to hear you tap dance through this one, Mr. Director,” Ike said.
“It’s complicated.”
“And the sun rises in the east. Director, you can do better than that. Tell me something I don’t already know. Ruth and I were very nearly killed out there tonight. If Archie Whitlock hadn’t mixed an incendiary device in with his flares and Alex Barr not made an amazingly well-timed appearance, we might not be here now. How soon did you know someone was after me and why did you sit on your hands and let this happen? Oh, and who the hell is Daniel Osborn?”
“That’s more than one question. Okay, not necessarily in order, here’s how it played out. Since you insist, Osborn is a problem solved…Wait, don’t interrupt. Osborn was about to be nominated for an important post at State—the African Desk, in fact. He had the backing of a very high roller whose campaign contributions to the President over the years represented an obscenely big number. You know how that game is played. Ordinarily there wouldn’t be a problem putting some hack in where a permanent staff
could keep him straight and seemingly competent, but in Osborn’s case the President received some unspecified but very strong negative feedback from several of the sub-Saharan nations.”
“Negative feedback? What sort of negative feedback?”
“As far as I know, nonspecific is all I have.”
“You’re the director of the goddam CIA,” Ruth rasped. “‘As far as I know’ doesn’t cut it. Sir, you run the agency that is supposed to know all kinds of sh…stuff about everybody. So, why didn’t you know this time?”
“That is a good question and one for which I have no immediate answer. Charlie will verify I have been tracking everything in and out of the agency since the appointment was announced. Our people in southern Africa were unsuccessful in digging out anything we could prove with any certainty. The countries that objected made it clear that the appointment would not sit well with most of southern and eastern Africa. I should say they made it very clear they were not happy.”
“But wouldn’t say why?”
“No. The President found himself between a rock and a hard place and asked me to check Osborn out. We were in the process of doing that when Archie turned up dead.”
“I don’t see how they connect.”
“Neither did I, but at the same time that news came in, the President’s aide began to press hard to close the files and stamp Osborn ‘ready for prime time.’ I tasked Charlie to find out how the people who got to Archie managed to find him in the first place. I hoped that would lead us to the reason for Osborn’s African problem. And, secondarily, if it was a leak within the agency, I wanted to be the first to know, so I had Mark, my aide, overlay Charlie’s search.”
“Sorry, boss, but that doesn’t make any sense,” Charlie said.
“Not to you, maybe, but you didn’t have the President’s pit-bull, Brattan, yapping at your heels. He, by the way, is a protégé of another influence peddler, and this may spell the end of his career in government. Anyway, that’s when Al Jackson went down. So, we had another piece of data, but no place to file it.”
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