Never Back Down

by William Casey Moreton

  The front passenger side door of the Tahoe was open. A man was standing at the open door looking in at the driver. Then he pushed the door closed as he turned toward the sidewalk. Coburn saw the face for only a second, but that was enough.

  Brian Ripley was the name his brain produced.

  The taxi accelerated through an intersection. Washington Square Park came into view. Coburn stared at the passing trees and parked cars. The taxi slowed for a turn and the driver swung onto Fifth Avenue without signaling. The Ford sedan swayed on the soft suspension.

  “Change of plans,” Coburn said. “Drop me here.”

  The driver left the transmission in gear and Coburn dropped cash over the seat and climbed out. The taxi sped away, taillights glowing red through neighborhoods lined with brownstones.

  Coburn was left standing alone. He quickly traversed the city block back to where the taxi had picked him up but the Tahoe was gone. For an instant, a few minutes earlier, his old friend had stood barely ten feet away, easily within shouting distance, and now he was gone, like he’d never really been there at all, lost to sight in the crush of humanity in a city of millions. Fog was settling over the city. He squinted into the distance and saw headlights twinkling like holiday decorations. Then he saw a man smoking a cigarette, standing with his back to a wall. He was staring out beyond the intermittent flash of traffic to the buildings on the opposite side of the street. He twisted the hand with the cigarette to glance at his watch. He then suddenly moved away from the wall and flicked the remainder of his smoke to the sidewalk where it skipped and sparked on the pavement. He stepped off the curb and walked briskly through a break in traffic. Coburn recognized him as the man with short, white hair from the Tahoe.

  Coburn pursued without hesitation. He didn’t call out to him, but simply followed. He watched the man with white hair slow to a more casual stride and cast a single furtive glance over one shoulder. Then the man paused beside a handrail made of ironwork, swung around the open end and disappeared down a flight of stairs.

  Coburn hopped the curb and jogged quickly to the handrail. He glanced over and down. The steps below appeared slick with mist and aglow in a splash of neon from the sign mounted overhead. The stairs ended at a narrow brick landing. The door to the bar was made from hundred year old wood with a panel of etched glass and a brass handle. He heaved it open. The bar smelled of spilled beer and body heat. The ceiling was low and the plank floor was scuffed and warped, a reflection of the abusive decades of the twentieth century. Customers stood three deep at the bar watching a replay of Sports Center. The man with white hair was leaning against the mahogany counter, his eyes roving. He didn’t appear to be interested in drinking.

  Coburn tracked his gaze and spotted Brian Ripley speaking to a woman with red hair. Coburn smiled. He began shuffling in Ripley’s direction through knots of slurred conversation. He felt relieved and pleased and could hardly wait to say hello. But as he approached, Ripley and the woman began moving toward the exit.

  “Ripley,” Coburn called out, but the sound of his voice was absorbed by the noise of the bar.

  Coburn shouldered his way forward and reached out to catch Ripley by the arm. “Ripley!” he said again.

  Smith felt the tug at his sleeve. He turned, expecting one of his own men.

  “How the hell are you, brother?” Coburn said, and put his hand out.

  Smith looked into Coburn’s eyes, processed his words and the sound of his voice and suddenly felt his chest turn to ice. For a moment he stood paralyzed. Then he shrugged off Coburn’s grip.

  “What’s it been? Sixteen or seventeen years?” Coburn asked.

  Smith felt the room tilt and sway. His pulse quickened.

  “Sorry, pal,” Smith managed. “You’ve got me confused with someone else.”

  Coburn was stunned. “Come on, man, it’s Coburn.”

  But instead of acknowledging him, Smith thrust a hand to the center of Coburn’s chest and shoved him away. The action was sudden and unexpected. The force of the move lifted him back on his heels, off balance, and he crashed backward into a knot of college students sucking on beers and laughing.

  Smith grabbed Heather by the arm. “Heather, let’s go,” he growled, too loudly, directing her toward the exit.

  She shuffled between tables and angled toward the door.

  Coburn righted himself. Suddenly there were hands on him, an arm around his throat from behind, and again he was off balance and being dragged through a door and into a narrow hallway. Another door opened. He was shoved to the restroom floor. The door was shut and locked. Two men hovered over him. One was the man with white hair and a scar. The other man Coburn didn’t recognize. Both men produced guns.

  “Blink and you’re dead,” Brown said.

  “Are you with the girl?” Miller demanded.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Wrong answer,” Brown said. Then he kicked Coburn in the face.

  The force of the blow tipped Coburn away from them, onto his side. He saw sparks of light but managed to not black out. The light in the room dimmed and his ears buzzed like bad radio reception. Through the static in his head he heard the bolt turn and the door open and close. They were gone.

  They had blindsided him while he was already off balance from Ripley’s bizarre reaction. And faced with gun muzzles six inches from his nose, the smart decision had been to resist any impulse to overpower them with muscle. So he had chosen to keep his mouth shut and remain on the floor.

  Coburn picked himself up and tried to check his face in the clouded mirror over the sink. His nose was a mess. It was pushed sideways and hurt like hell. He ducked out the door and down the hall to the bar. There were a few stares upon his return, but there was clearly a general disinterest in the dude from the restroom with the bloodied face.

  There was no sign of the clowns who had jumped him.

  Coburn went out and took the steps up to the street three at a time, grabbing at the iron handrail, and pushed out into the grimy night air. He ran to the curb and stared down the street in one direction and then the other. There was no sign of Ripley or the girl with the red hair, or the two thugs. He crossed the street and sprinted to the corner where he’d originally spotted the man with the white hair and looked down both ends of the cross street. Still nothing. He squinted into the glare from headlights, blood dripping from his nose. The mist had turned to rain, the pavement sizzling under the downpour.

  Coburn pushed his fingers through his hair and sucked in a deep breath, at a loss to understand what had happened back there. There was no doubt the man he had spoken to was his old friend Brian Ripley, and equally no doubt that Ripley had wanted nothing to do with him.

  Coburn backed into a sheltered doorway and let the rainwater channel past him down the sidewalk, his mind suddenly very much awake and very confused.

  It was Monday, September 7, 11:40 p.m.

  3

  11:58 p.m.

  Coburn walked several blocks north and found a hotel. The woman at the desk stared at his face. His nose had swelled significantly. It felt like he had gotten into a fight with a brick wall and the wall had won.

  “Enjoy your stay, Dr. Coburn,” she said, returning his card. Her tone was barely hospitable.

  He rode the elevator to his room on the fourth floor. He turned on the TV. Letterman had a forgettable guest promoting a forgettable movie. He opened the drapes. Traffic lights flashed in the distance. His reflection stared back at him from the glass.

  Coburn turned away from the window, dropping his keys and wallet on the bedside table. He kicked off his shoes one at a time and walked barefoot to the bathroom. He touched the light switch and studied himself in the mirror. He grabbed a towel from the wall rack and wet it under the faucet to clean his face. The bridge of his nose was busted. His eyes watered when he touched the fracture with the tip of a finger. He sat on the edge of the bed and called down to the front desk to ask for some specific first-aid supplies.r />
  Coburn felt like a punk for getting pushed around so easily, but what bothered him more was that Ripley had reacted in such an unexpected and violent manner. For a few years they had been like brothers. They had shared a dorm room, shared women, and shared a passion for adventure. But one day Ripley had packed a bag with what little he owned, said something to the effect of having a change of heart about school, and simply walked out the door. That was seventeen years ago. Coburn hadn’t seen him since.

  Had the man responded at all to the name Ripley? Coburn thought he had seen something flash in Ripley’s eyes. He believed it was part recognition, but more than that, part of what he had seen looked a lot like fear.

  There was a knock at the door. He tipped the young man and took the small paper bag to the bathroom. He unwrapped a plastic cup from the bathroom counter and swallowed three Tylenol capsules. Coburn gritted his teeth against the pain as he applied three strips of tape from a small metal spool to his nose to hold the bone steady. He studied his work in the mirror and decided he looked like Jack Nicholson in Chinatown.

  Coburn cut the lights and sat at the edge of the bed. He stripped down to only his jeans and stared at the wall across the room. Shadows danced on the wall from the light of the television. He thought about Ripley and the gorgeous redhead with him. None of the events of the past hour made any sense. He let these thoughts and others continue to bounce around his mind as he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

  4

  Moonlight fell on the beach as the man Heather knew as “Mr. Armstrong” strolled leisurely across the sand, following in the tracks left by his pair of loyal Dobermans. Shelves of cloud shifted, but the moon remained visible. Monarch and Teddy had dashed up ahead, nearly out of sight. He heard them barking at the tide.

  The lights from his mansion sparkled against the grim backdrop of the night sky. Armstrong strolled with his hands locked behind his back, listening to the sounds of the surf and the low whistle of the breeze. He was expecting a call and felt uncharacteristically anxious.

  Armstrong was seventy-one years old but could have passed for a strong fifty-five. His hair was full and a lustrous shade of silver. He was a tall man, still thick through the chest, with powerful shoulders and a determined stride. He was a transplant to the East Coast, having made his fortune in Silicone Valley, amassing hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of thirty years. He had relocated a number of years earlier in an effort to be nearer to his daughter, and to rebuild and repair their relationship. He had become a father late in life and now regretted waiting, regretted putting ambition ahead of all else. And he regretted not being a part of his daughter’s life until it was too late. Now someone had taken her away from him. Jenna was dead, murdered by monsters half a world away.

  Armstrong followed a stone path to the patio of his home. He called to the dogs and they followed him inside.

  “Good boys,” he told them.

  He took an elevator to the upper level of his mansion. He went through a set of double doors into a wide, deep room stripped of all furniture except for a hardwood conference table set in the middle and a few racks of equipment standing along the walls. There were no chairs around the table. This was not a room intended for sitting. This was a war room.

  He stood with his hands on his hips like a general overseeing his troops. His eyes swept past huge maps on the walls. They were topographical images of at least a dozen countries and cities, including Pakistan, London, and Paris taken from hundreds of miles above earth by the glass-eye lens of a satellite.

  He poured coffee and prepared for another long night studying the incoming intelligence and updates that streamed from his computers and radios. Sleep did not interest him. Maybe he would nap when he turned ninety and they hooked him to an IV and fed his oxygen through a hose, but not now. There was too much work to be done.

  International news broadcasts from satellite feeds from around the world were piped into an array of 50-inch LCD television screens. The broadcasts were muted – the closed captioning scrolling down in short bursts of text. The metal racks along the walls held computer monitors, hard drives, routers, a laser printer, and various shortwave radio equipment. The low sizzle of radio static was constant. Distant voices chattered in crazy dialects.

  It wasn’t easy being patient. He’d been patient too many years already. He held the cell phone in his hand and stared at the collection of photos on the walls. Among them were photos of one man in particular. Armstrong had his face memorized. He could have picked those cold black eyes from a crowd of thousands any day of any week. He had spent a significant amount of his personal fortune hunting the man in those photos. And tonight was the night that he would take a giant step closer to locating him. He was certain of it. All he had to do was wait for the cell phone in his hand to ring.

  5

  Smith hadn’t planned to kill her. It had been a split-second decision. He had panicked. Maybe it was a mistake, but he was still alive after all these years because he always covered his tracks.

  Smith had moved swiftly, hooking an arm around Heather’s head, clamping a hand over her mouth, and hauling her down into the bushes as they hurried through Washington Square Park. The girl had struggled, but not for long. It was a practiced move, pulling the gun and pressing it into her back.

  She went hard to the ground, falling with her arms at her sides. She died instantly.

  Smith collected his shell casings and grabbed the girl’s backpack, then backed out of the bushes and stepped onto a paved path at the edge of the park. He shoved the gun back into his jacket and jogged across the street.

  Smith was blocks away in a matter of minutes and turned into a cluttered alley to open the girl’s pack. Her cell phone was in there. He smashed it underfoot and then kicked the pieces into the darkness of the alley. He discarded the other contents of the backpack in a trashcan along the sidewalk as he hurried on.

  He hadn’t planned to kill her, but things had changed. They had changed because of John Coburn. The unexpected encounter with Coburn had rocked Smith to his core. Coburn had called him by name. No one had called him Ripley in more than fifteen years. It felt as if he’d been prodded with an electric current.

  Ripley. A ghost from the past. Ripley. The man he used to be, once upon a time.

  Smith was certain the girl had heard Coburn use the name Brian Ripley, so there had been no choice but to eliminate her. And that was fine, because he had waited until after she had given him what they needed, what they had paid her for, before taking such drastic action.

  He glanced over one shoulder as his stride lengthened. No one followed. He dialed a number on his cell phone. A man named Folston answered on the first ring.

  “This is Smith. The transaction is complete. Send the car.”

  “Tell me.”

  “His name is Caspian.”

  “Is the girl with you?”

  “No,” said Smith.

  “What if she’s lying?”

  It was a question Smith had already considered a dozen times in the past few minutes.

  “Don’t worry about the girl,” Smith answered.

  Folston was silent a beat.

  “Send the car,” Smith said again. He touched a hand to the slim manila envelope Heather had given him.

  “You shouldn’t have let her go so soon,” Folston insisted.

  “Send the damn car,” Smith said a third time. “It’s time to find Caspian.”

  • • •

  “We have a name.” Folston said.

  Armstrong listened without breathing. The cell phone was at his ear. His eyes were locked on a framed photo of his deceased daughter.

  “The man’s name is Caspian,” Folston added.

  “Where is he?”

  “We have an address. Our team will be there shortly.”

  Armstrong nodded. “Good.”

  “It’s an apartment on the Upper East Side.”

  “What about the girl?”
/>   “We will deal with her as needed.”

  “I want Caspian tonight.”

  “One step at a time.”

  “Find him.”

  6

  Smith opened the envelope Heather had given him. Two-point-five million dollars had bought them Caspian’s name, address, and four digit security code. They were hand written on an index card, and she had included a key to his Upper East Side apartment.

  The lights of midtown washed over the Tahoe as Smith used the navigation screen mounted in the dash. The residential building rose out of the earth from the middle of the city block. It was a façade of glass and stone. Jones eased off the gas and they made a slow pass. An unspoken thought passed between them: Caspian was somewhere inside the building.

  “Find a place to turn around,” Smith ordered. “I want another look.”

  Jones nodded. He watched his mirrors, and at the first break in traffic he turned the wheel hard and made a U-turn across both lanes.

  “A doorman in front,” Brown observed.

  “Not a problem.”

  Jones double-parked a block away. Headlights streamed around them.

  “Wait for my call,” Smith said.

  Smith walked between the cars parked along the curb to the sidewalk. The doorman looked bored. It was probably the start of his shift. He was still a kid, all of twenty-eight, and beefy, thick through the chest and arms but soft like a high school linebacker after a lazy summer at the lake. Smith could cut him in half without blinking. At the first hint of trouble, Smith would drive a fist into the kid’s fleshy windpipe and drop him like a sack of dirt.

  The building rose 40 floors. Caspian lived on the 14th.