Third Strike

by Philip R. Craig

  I thought he was right. “We will be,” I said, “but Callahan won’t.”

  “I think we’re at a standoff,” he said.

  When you absolutely know that you’re going to die and there’s nothing you can do about it, fear disappears and you become quite detached. “No,” I said. “You’re all through right here. You can take me with you, but this is the end of it. Put down the weapon and we can both live.”

  “Are you so brave?” he said. “Does life mean so little to you?”

  I shrugged, wondering what Zee and the children would do without me. I wished that I could be there to see. “I’m not brave,” I said. “I want to live. I hope you do too.”

  “I’m trying to decide whether I can lift this thing and shoot you with it before you can shoot me.”

  “I don’t think you can.”

  He seemed to consider his options carefully. Then he said, “Neither do I,” and he bent and lowered the launcher to the ground.

  “Step away,” I said. “Do you have any other weapons?”

  “No.” He stepped away from the launcher.

  “I believe you, but I’m going to search you anyway. Don’t do anything to make me nervous.”

  I searched him and found not even a pocketknife. I used his bootlaces to tie his hands and then, remembering the firecracker sounds, used his cell phone to call Brady’s phone, breathing between my teeth.

  I felt weak when I got no answer, and fear for Brady brought a chill of bitterness toward Zapata and his crew. What had happened over there?

  I rang off, called 911, and told them where I was and what had happened. Then I walked with Zapata back down the path to the van, where I used the guard’s bootlaces to truss him as well. He was still alive, but he was bleeding from one ear. I felt very cold and indifferent toward both of them.

  I sat Zapata against a tree and studied him. His dark eyes were full of thoughts.

  “What was this all about?” I asked. “What did Joe Callahan do to make you so angry that you’d kill a plane full of people just to get at him?”

  “In war they call civilian casualties collateral damage,” he said. “They are the price that must be paid for justice.”

  “What justice? Callahan was one of the most humane presidents we’ve ever had.”

  Zapata’s face tightened. “Humane? He supported the death squads in Nicaragua.”

  “Not for long,” I said. “He got rid of them during his first months in office.”

  “Too late,” he said. “Did you ever hear of the Santa Anna Mission Hospital? I was working there with Nate Lundsberg and Lou Mortison.”

  “Nate?” I said. “Dr. Lundsberg, you mean?”

  Zapata nodded. “He’s an amazing man. A saint.”

  “Who’s Lou Mortison?”

  “Bob Mortison’s younger brother. Nate was the doctor and Lou and I and Nate’s wife, Julia, were his assistants. We were the only medical team in the area, but the CIA had it in their heads that we were supporting the guerrillas. They couldn’t send the army, because that would be bad politics, but they could send the death squads, and that’s what they did. They killed all our patients, and they killed Lou, and they killed Julia, though not before they raped her, and they burned the place to the ground. Nate and I managed to escape.” He looked up at me with passionate eyes. “We’ve been waiting thirteen years for justice.”

  “You’ve killed at least two men who didn’t deserve it,” I said. “Where’s the justice for them?”

  The flame faded from his eyes. He looked at the ground. “You mean Alvarez and Bucyck. I didn’t know about them until after it happened. That was Harry Doyle’s work. We never should have brought him into the group, but he’s loyal to Bob Mortison. We needed someone as tough as Harry is, and he would do anything for money. It was his idea to use the missiles, too.”

  “Where did you get them?”

  “Harry got them. Apparently there were so many made and shipped around the world that nobody knows how many are still out there. I don’t know where he got them, but he says there are more if we need them.” He lifted his eyes. “I’m not sorry about the missiles, but I’m sorry about those two men and the other innocent people who would have died on the plane. I hope you can believe that.”

  I could believe it.

  “I guess I understand Larry Bucyck,” I said. “He was onto your plan. But why Eduardo Alvarez? Why blow up the Trident?”

  “It was looking like the strike might get settled without Callahan,” he said. “We needed to unsettle it to get Callahan down here. It was Mortison’s brainstorm. Blow up the boat, make it look like the strikers did it, and they’d all walk away from the table. Alvarez just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “I guess to hell he was,” I said.

  The guard groaned and moved a little bit.

  I listened for the sound of cars bringing the police, but heard none.

  I thought about men like Zapata and Lundsberg. Good men normally, heroic, even, but capable of wickedness almost beyond comprehension. And more than capable of seeing their evil as necessary and therefore moral. I remembered reading about Hitler’s last days in the Berlin bunker when he still believed that he’d been right in everything he’d done and that one day the world would come to recognize that.

  God save us from idealists. They’re more dangerous than fiends.

  But was I much different? I was ready to shoot Zapata in cold blood because he was willing to kill a plane full of people I didn’t think should be killed. We all must have some thinly covered instinct to destroy anyone or anything that seriously threatens our vision of life as it should be. Show me a sufficient danger and I’ll show you my fangs. My avatar, if I have one, has bloody claws.

  Then I thought about Brady. What had happened with him? Who had loosed that sputter of shots?

  I heard the whump-whump sound of helicopter blades, and soon a Coast Guard copter came swinging toward us over the trees. It circled above us.

  Then I heard the sounds of automobile engines, and I stepped around the cluster of oak brush to a spot where I could see the road and watch Zapata at the same time. A state-police cruiser came into sight, and I waved it down. Dom Agganis stepped out and came toward me as other cruisers pulled up behind his and other men stepped out, some of them in civilian garb—chinos and summer shirts hanging loose over their belts. Clearly feds in their Vineyard casual duds.

  “Are you all right?” Agganis asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Any casualties?”

  “A guy with a sore head. You might want a medic to look at him.”

  “What happened here?”

  I told him, and he nodded.

  “All right,” he said. “We’ll take it from here. You can start by handing over that Uzi.” He nodded back toward the cruisers. “There are guys from Washington here, and they’ll want a report.”

  I’d forgotten I had the Uzi. I gave it to him, along with the pistol that had belonged to the guard. “There’s an armed missile in a launcher up yonder,” I said, pointing up the path. “You might want somebody who knows what he’s doing to disarm it.”

  “Good thought. Where’s Coyne?”

  I pointed west. “Deep Bottom Road. He went to check out another possible missile site. I heard what sounded like shots, and he doesn’t answer his cell phone. I’ve got to get over there.”

  “Leave that to us.” He put a big hand on my shoulder, squeezed it, and turned back to the cruiser, where Olive Otero stood with four feds. “Come on.”

  When we got to them, he told everyone what I’d told him and said, “You take over here, Olive. Cuff Zapata and call an ambulance for the other guy. I’ll be back.”

  “I’m going with you,” I said.

  “No you’re not,” said one of the feds. “You’re coming with us.” He showed me a grim face and a Secret Service shield.

  “Fuck you,” I said, reaching for the door handle of Dom’s cruiser.
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  “No,” said Agganis, stepping between me and the door. “Someone just tried to kill Joe Callahan, and these guys work for him. They need to know exactly what’s been happening around here. You go with them.” His voice was gentle but firm. “We’ll go find out what happened to Coyne.”

  “I don’t know who’s over there,” I said, “but one of them may have the machine gun I heard.”

  He waved two policemen over and told them to follow him. Then he turned the cruiser and drove away with other cops and federal agents following him.

  Now it was raining a small misty rain. It had been raining for a while, but I’d barely noticed.

  “Come with us, Mr. Jackson,” said a man in a summer shirt.

  I hesitated, then got into a cruiser. One man drove, one sat beside him, and one sat on either side of me in the backseat. No one said much as we drove to state-police headquarters in Oak Bluffs.

  Someone offered me a cigarette, but I shook my head.

  I spent two hours at the station going over the events of the past few days, then going over them again, and then going over them yet again, sometimes remembering things I’d forgotten to mention before and sometimes forgetting to mention things I’d said earlier. When they finally got through with me, they seemed angry, but satisfied.

  “All right,” said the chief among them. “Mike, here, will take you home now. We’ll probably want to talk with you again. One thing. Don’t talk with the press about this business. Let us get a handle on it first. It’s a matter of national security.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Now, please, take me up to see what happened to Brady.”

  “No. We’ll take you home.”

  “I’ll need my truck. It’s up where Brady is. My wife’s car is in the garage.”

  “Good. That’ll make it easier for you to stay home. You can get your car tomorrow.”

  “Come on,” said Mike. “Your wife is probably worrying about you.”

  She probably was, and I didn’t want her to. I worry her enough under normal circumstances.

  “All right,” I said.

  Mike drove me home in silence and left the house the same way.

  The rain shower had passed over, and I was sitting on the balcony with a drink when Gloria Alvarez’s car came into the yard and deposited Zee and the kids and a ton of beach stuff in the yard before driving away again. They’d had a long day on the sand.

  “I’ll be up as soon as I shower,” called Zee, waving at me.

  After a while she came up, glass in hand. She was bright and clean and shiny, but her eyes were full of care. She gave me a kiss, then sat down and raised her glass. “Consider yourself clinked and tell me about your day, if you think I should know about it. Where’s Brady?”

  I wanted to tell her everything, and I did. When I was through, Zee shook her head and slid close to me. She put her arm around me. “You could have been killed. You scare me. Now I’m worried about Brady.”

  “So am I. The plane landed, so Callahan is all right, but I can’t remember whether I heard the shots before or after that.”

  “Dom should tell us what happened. He shouldn’t make us wait.”

  I could imagine several reasons why he might not want to tell us anything. None of them was good.

  Zee felt the tension in my body and tightened her arm around my waist. “I find it almost impossible to believe that anyone would want to harm Joe Callahan. He’s such a good man.”

  Being good never saved anyone, as the saints and martyrs can attest. “It’s over now,” I said. “Callahan’s safe.”

  “But is Brady safe?” Zee had tears in her eyes. “If he isn’t hurt, they won’t charge him with anything, will they?”

  I thought that, the law being what it is, Brady, and I, too, for that matter, could be charged with some crime or other, but I wasn’t worried about that. I was worried about that flurry of shots that I’d heard.

  “I imagine Brady’s fine,” I lied. I felt I was on the lip of the Void, ready to fall.

  We sat close together in the fading evening light and looked out over the gray waters of Nantucket Sound where the sailboats were easing toward harbor under the low dark sky. In spite of the sultry summer heat, the earth seemed without form, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

  What had become of Brady?

  Chapter Sixteen

  Brady

  I was looking straight into the gaping muzzle of Harry Doyle’s missile launcher.

  Instinctively I ducked sideways and dropped into a crouch. In the same motion, I braced the Uzi against my hip and pointed it at him. “Drop that thing, Harry. Do it now.”

  He looked directly at me, and his lip curled into a hateful smile. “Fuck you.”

  Then he turned and pointed the business end of the Stinger at the sky.

  Overhead, the drone of the plane materialized, grew louder, then faded, making another circle before it landed.

  “Put it down,” I repeated.

  Harry Doyle ignored me. He hunched his shoulder, squinted his eye, peered through the sight on his weapon, and tracked it across the sky above us like a skeet shooter swinging on a high-flying clay pigeon.

  If he launched the missile in the general direction of Callahan’s plane, the missile’s heat-seeking guidance system would do the rest, and it would be all over.

  I held the Uzi tight in both hands, held my breath, and pulled back on the trigger. The sudden burst of noise exploded in my ears.

  The missile launcher fell from Doyle’s shoulder onto the ground. His face and chest blossomed red. He windmilled his arms, staggered a few steps backward, then crashed into the underbrush. He twitched a couple times, then lay as still as death on the rain-soaked ground.

  I let the Uzi fall from my hands. My entire body began to shiver and tremble. I tilted my head to look at the sky. The rain was cold on my face, and my mind was empty of thought or feeling.

  A few minutes later, out of the wet silence, came the sudden deafening roar of a big engine, and then a jet airplane broke through the low clouds just a few hundred feet directly over my head. Its landing gear was down and its lights flashed bright colors in the rainy afternoon twilight. I watched it sink toward the slick runway of the Martha’s Vineyard Airport. My fists and jaw were clenched tight as I waited for the blast and explosion of airplane and Stinger missile colliding in the air.

  President Callahan’s jet dropped toward the runway, touched down, bounced slightly, then slowed in a roar of backdraft and a screech of rubber-on-wet-tarmac. At the end of the runway it turned and taxied over to the terminal.

  He had made it.

  My entire body was a clenched fist. I didn’t know how long I’d been holding my breath. I let it out in a big cathartic whoosh.

  And then all the strength seeped out of me. My head felt like it wanted to lift off my neck and drift up into the sky. I let myself drop to the ground, and I sat there hugging my legs with my forehead on my knees.

  I took a dozen slow, deep breaths and waited for the adrenaline overdose of the past few minutes to drain away. I was dizzy and nauseated and utterly exhausted. The rain, and the realization of what I’d just done, washed over me.

  After a few minutes I forced myself to lift my head and look around.

  Harry Doyle hadn’t moved. He was sprawled on his back. His chest bloomed with red splotches. The Stinger missile launcher lay on the ground beside him.

  I crawled over to him and pressed my fingers against his neck, searching for the pulse I knew I wouldn’t find. Two of the Uzi bullets had hit him in the face—one just under the left side of his nose, the other above his right eye.

  I wondered what destiny in Doyle’s life had decreed that he should end it here in the rain on a scrubby-oak knoll on the southwestern side of Martha’s Vineyard, a failed presidential assassin, killed in the nick of time by a wills-and-estates lawyer from Boston with an Uzi.

  Callahan had made it. His plane wasn’t shot down. That was the important thing.<
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  I fished my cell phone from my pocket, pecked out the number for J.W.’s cell, hit Send, held it to my ear.

  It bleated once, weakly. Then nothing.

  I looked at it. The battery was dead.

  Well, J.W. knew where I was. Assuming that he was all right, sooner or later he’d tell the police, and they’d come.

  I had the Land Cruiser. But I wasn’t going anywhere. I couldn’t leave the crime scene. The place where an assassin and his sentry had set up his ambush. The place where I’d given one a concussion, at least, and killed the other.

  I made my way back down the path to where the sentry had been. He was still lying where I’d left him. I knelt beside him. I could see that he was breathing.

  I poked his shoulder. “Are you awake?” I said.

  His eyelids fluttered, but he said nothing.

  I don’t know how long I knelt there in the rain. My sense of time had deserted me, and I might have drifted off into some kind of postadrenaline stupor, when I heard in the distance the unmistakable thump-thump of helicopter blades.

  A minute later the slamming of a car door jerked me upright.

  The police was my first thought.

  Harry Doyle’s compatriots was my second thought. More men with Uzis and missiles. More assassins.

  I still had Zee’s Beretta in my pocket. I pulled it out and slipped behind some bushes.

  Then I heard the static of a police radio and saw the strobing blue light flashing through the wet woods.

  I put the Beretta back into my pocket, stepped out onto the opening, put both hands on top of my head, and shouted, “I’m Brady Coyne. I’m a friend. Don’t shoot me.”

  A uniformed cop came up the path. He held a police assault shotgun at his hip. He stopped when he saw me, raised his shotgun to his shoulder, and aimed it at the middle of my chest. “On the ground,” he said. “On your belly. Right now. Put your hands behind you.”

  I did what he said.

  Then there were two of them. The first one stood over me aiming the shotgun at my head. The other one patted my pockets, found the Beretta, took it out.