Blood Contest

by P. K. Abbot

  This solemn group followed Trey’s coffin up the ramp into the train station, into an elevator, and down to the platform where the train awaited them. The platform was already filled with mourners – family and close friends – who watched silently as the sad procession passed by and entered the train.

  The train was a special funeral train, consisting of the engine and four cars. The last car was reserved for the coffin and the immediate family only. It consisted of two sections: a rear section where the coffin was displayed on its bier and a forward compartment which combined the amenities of a parlor and a dining car for the family. The neighboring car housed the state police escort and Governor Jamieson’s closest friends, while the two forward cars held the other mourners and the press.

  Mike entered the next to the last car of the train. While the state police escort had already occupied the forward end of the car, Mike sat in the rearmost seat against the window on the right side of the car.

  Before the train left the station, Jamie came forward from the last car and sat next to Mike. Mike tried to stand up, but Jamie put his hand on Mike’s shoulder and stopped him from standing.

  “Thank you for coming today,” the Governor said.

  “Again, I’m so sorry for your loss, Governor,” Mike replied.

  “This is going to be another very long day, and I am glad to have friends like you with me, Michael.” The Governor gave Mike a weak smile and continued. “Do you know how Trey’s murder case is progressing?”

  “The investigators have actually made a good deal of progress already. They have eliminated all of the possible suspects whom they garnered from the bank records which you had given to them on Saturday morning. And, as you know, they have a fingerprint from the scene of Trey’s murder. With the fingerprint, they have identified a possible suspect. They have not yet located the suspect, but they have issued an APB for him, and they should apprehend him soon. In the meantime, they are continuing to eliminate other suspects and are working on the evidence against their prime suspect. They will apprehend him, Governor. I am sure of that.”

  “Good. Good,” the Governor said. “I do not want my boy’s death to count for nothing. I appreciate the hard work that you all are doing to get this done. Thank you.” He patted Mike’s knee.

  The train’s wheels suddenly squealed and juddered, moving ever so slowly against the track.

  “Well, I had better get back to Susan and Laura. I am going to use the washroom and then go back to them.” He gave Mike another weak smile and patted him on the shoulder. The Governor walked across the aisle to the washroom and locked the door behind him as the train moved slowly down the track.

  *****

  In the village of Morrisville, on the Pennsylvania side of the river, a black Mercedes sedan was idling on the side of the road, just before the entry ramp to the highway. The driver sat silently until the alarm on the cell phone announced a text message. The driver looked at the text and said, “It’s time.”

  The Mercedes rolled onto the highway and was quickly on the span across the river. The driver slowed the sedan and came to a stop on the shoulder of the bridge, in the middle of the span.

  A man exited the Mercedes with a rifle. He walked to the front of the vehicle, rested his rifle on the bridge’s guard rail, and faced the railroad bridge. He looked through his scope at the bridge and waited for the train.

  *****

  As the train started its journey, it moved powerfully but slowly along the track. Since the train station was only a mile from the river, the train was still traveling at less than twenty miles per hour when it neared the river.

  The conductor had entered the front end of the third car. He was walking back to the final car to check on the Jamieson family, but he had stopped to talk with the state troopers in the front of the car.

  As the train reached the railroad bridge, Mike turned idly to his right and looked out the window at the bridge which boasted, “TRENTON MAKES...THE WORLD TAKES.” Something was different, he thought. The red pinpoint of light was different. Then he realized what it was. It was a laser sighting device for a firearm.

  Mike jumped to his feet and yelled, “Everyone hit the floor! Now!”

  For a moment the conductor was confused. He was confused by the sound of the man screaming at the far end of the car and then by the sound of bullets ripping through the safety glass behind him. As he turned to look behind him, his throat exploded with a sudden, searing pain. He coughed, and the metallic taste of warm blood was in his mouth. He felt like he was breathing under water. He saw the floor rushing up toward him, and then only blackness as he collapsed on the floor.

  Suddenly the firing stopped. Was it an equipment failure, a jam? Mike wondered.

  Without hesitating, Mike ran toward the conductor. Streams of blood were pulsing from the conductor’s neck. Mike guessed that the bullet had torn his carotid artery. Mike stripped off his jacket and pressed it hard against the wound, but it was useless. Mike was kneeling in an ever widening pool of blood. The conductor was already dead. He needed only another two minutes until his heart would pump out the rest of his blood from his body and his heart itself would stop beating.

  Mike heard the footsteps of a man rushing toward him. Looking up from the floor, Mike noticed dust on the knees of the man’s black trousers. Then he recognized the man as Governor Jamieson.

  The Governor knelt in the pool of blood on the other side of the conductor and placed his hands on Mike’s blood soaked jacket. Mike looked at him and said, “There is no more to be done for him, Governor. He is gone.”

  *****

  The shooter on the bridge was changing the rifle’s magazine when the driver signaled him to break off his attack. Too many passing motorists were starting to notice the shooting. The sedan’s driver saw at least one motorist with a cell phone camera.

  The shooter did not argue with the driver but got into the Mercedes. The sedan drove on at a moderate speed, turned onto the first exit after the bridge, and disappeared into the warren of streets that is South Trenton.

  *****

  The Governor’s state police security detail wanted him to disembark at Bristol, the next large station on the line, and to return with his family by motorcade to the security of the Jamieson estate. But the governor would have none of that. He insisted that they go on to Philadelphia as planned. He was determined that his son should be laid to rest today.

  The crime scene investigators retrieved more than a hundred casings from the scene of the shooting. On a number of the casings, the investigators found fingerprints, again belonging to Roshan Roshni.

  It was afternoon when the funeral train returned to the Trenton station. After the CSU had collected evidence and photographed the train, Ryan and Mueller interviewed Mike Kieran and inspected the train car. They were struck by the fact that the shots were too high to inflict maximum damage. The bullets all struck in the top twelve inches of the windows. Had he shot lower, the shooter could have severely wounded forty people in this car alone. As it was, the conductor was the sole fatality, but only because he was standing and walking through the car at the time of the shooting. Ryan thought the placement of the shots was noteworthy, until Mueller convinced him that Roshni had always been incompetent and had likely just screwed up his assignment.

  At 5 PM Ryan and Mueller were walking through the station’s concourse on their way home, when they saw Governor Jamieson on the large television screen there.

  The Governor was being interviewed by Will Cooper. The Governor was grim faced. He seemed extremely tired, and he had dried blood smeared on his white shirt.

  “Governor Jamieson, I want to offer my sympathy to you on the tragic death of your son.”

  “Thank you, Will.”

  “Governor Jamieson, many people say that your candidacy and your strong opposition to international terrorism have marked you as a prime target of terrorists. It is also rumored that your son’s killer may be an Iranian national. If this prove
s to be true, one could argue that your son Trey had been murdered because of your candidacy. How do you respond to that argument, Governor?”

  Jamie looked into the camera. He seemed weary, and there were tears welling in his green eyes. “I have thought about this incessantly for the last two days, Will. It is a terrible burden, a terrible guilt. I believe that what I have to say to the American people is terribly important, but, if I had known that it would cause Trey’s death, I do not know what I would have done. I don’t believe that I would have done it. I don’t believe that I would have chosen for my son to die. No, if I had known that Trey would die, I don’t believe that I would have started down this path.

  The Governor continued, “But that is a moot point now, isn’t it, Mr. Cooper? Trey is dead. There is no changing that now. So now I will continue to say what I have been saying. It is important, and I feel that, at the very least, I now owe it to Trey to continue.”

  “But you continue to face danger, Governor. Your train was attacked today. Aren’t you concerned about your own safety?”

  “I will not become a casualty of this terrorist plot. If I were to curtail my activity now, if I were to speak less openly about these issues, I would become a victim of these terrorists. And I refuse to do that. More importantly, I am determined to avenge my son’s murder. I am determined to use the full power of the New Jersey state police to find justice for Trey. ”

  Jamie looked directly into the camera again. This time there were no tears in his eyes, only anger, as he vowed, “Know this. Whoever you are, we are coming for you with all of the resources of the New Jersey state police, and we shall not rest until you are brought to justice.”

  Ryan and Mueller looked at each other, knowing that now they were officially over their heads.

  Chapter 14

  Tuesday, December 29

  In eastern Afghanistan, the United States Army had built a string of outposts to prevent Taliban insurgents from moving freely back and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

  It was in the most remote and inaccessible of these outposts that Delta Company had arrived with its consignment of female teachers yesterday. They arrived at dusk while it was still light enough for the Chinook helicopter to set down but not light enough to draw sustained, small arms fire.

  The outpost had a military function – to project American power into the easternmost reaches of Afghanistan and to disrupt the Taliban there, only a few miles from their safe haven in Pakistan. The outpost had a military function, but, when the soldiers of Delta Company disembarked from the Chinook helicopter, every one of them realized at once that the site of the outpost had been selected not by a general but by a politician. The outpost sat at the bottom of a gorge surrounded by towering cliffs. Militarily it was indefensible.

  Still the soldiers of Delta Company intended to accomplish the mission for which they had trained and for which they had been sent to this outpost. For the better part of the coming year, Delta Company was to provide security for the female teachers whom they had escorted to the outpost. The teachers were to set up a school for girls in the neighboring town. The allies hoped that this school for girls would be the sharp stick that they could poke into the eye of the Taliban, right here in the Taliban’s backyard, next to its home base.

  The soldiers of Delta Company would start their long mission tomorrow, but today they were free. A handful of the young men decided to relieve their tensions with a game of rough touch football.

  They played their game on the camp’s parade field, a dusty, rock-strewn, and uneven piece of ground. It was just an ugly piece of scrubland, but, for today only, it was where they could blow off some steam. In reality the game was no more than a pickup game, but, in the minds of these young men, it was their Super Bowl.

  Besides the football there was no athletic equipment. The men wore no cleats adapted to their rock-strewn playing surface. They wore only their combat boots and fatigue pants. They wore no team colors to differentiate the teams from each other. One side wore their T-shirts; the other side wore no shirts. Shirts vs. skins marked the two teams.

  The teachers came out to observe the game from the sideline. They were four young, attractive, French women in their twenties — all of Algerian descent. None of them knew anything about American football, but the game held other attractions for them. They sometimes called out in English to encourage the soldiers, but mostly they spoke in French to each other. They made lewd comments to each other about the men’s naked, muscular torsos, and they made each other laugh so hard that some of them blushed when they talked about how the male nipple reacted to the wintry Afghan air. There was enough testosterone on the field to hold their interest.

  The teams were five against four. The skins seemed to be disadvantaged, but they had a special player, the young, athletic, black man with the wide smile and the lively black eyes, JR Burton.

  The skins had the ball first. Their quarterback took the snap from center and flipped the ball to JR, who was still in the backfield.

  Odom on the shirts team yelled, “Burton has the ball, get him.”

  As the first player rushed him, JR held the ball as if he were going to launch a pass downfield. The rusher jumped in the air to block the pass. JR then smiled to himself, ducked under the rusher, and started downfield.

  Odom was now barreling across the field and coming full speed at JR. JR waited until Odom was nearly on top of them. Then he planted his right foot and pivoted left, running diagonally across the field with the rest of the shirts following behind him until he crossed the goal line.

  After one play, it was 7 – 0, skins.

  The teachers broke into catcalls. They were speaking French and directed their comments at the one they called Claudine, the one with the pretty smile and amber eyes. Claudine laughed with them but started to blush.

  Odom now took the kickoff for the shirts. He got behind a wedge of blockers and started downfield. One of the skins broke through the wedge, but Odom punched him and kept running. JR looped around the wedge and came up to Odom from behind. JR shoved him with both hands so hard that Odom came off his feet and landed hard on the ground. Odom bounced up from the ground and started swinging at JR until the other players pulled them apart.

  Odom lined up as a wide receiver on the next play. JR lined up across from him but close to him. When the ball was hiked, Odom threw a fistful of dust and pebbles into JR’s face. Odom broke across the field and caught the pass from his quarterback, but in a moment JR was on top of him and shoved him hard with both hands so that he fell to the ground again. Odom came up swinging so that the players had to separate the two again.

  On the next play JR gave Odom more space and let him break into the open. When the shirts’ quarterback floated a pass toward Odom, JR broke on the ball and started to taunt Odom. “Come on, Odom. Here’s your chance for glory. Don’t screw it up, Odom.” JR laughed as he slid in front of Odom and picked the ball out of the air.

  JR rushed down the field with the ball. Ten yards from the goal line, he turned around and saw Odom furiously trying to close the distance between them. JR laughed at him and ran the rest of the distance backwards across the goal line. 14 – 0, skins.

  Claudine was standing next to the end zone when JR crossed the goal line.

  “What did you think of that play?” JR asked her.

  “It was impressive,” she answered, but then she chuckled, “but I wonder if your combat helmet will still fit your inflated head after this game.”

  He gave her a very broad grin and answered. “When the Army issued my equipment, they took one look at me and decided to issue me the largest helmet that they had.”

  “Good,” she chuckled. “The Army must be very perceptive.” They both laughed at this, and she blushed a little.

  A sergeant walked over to the field from the headquarters building and yelled to the group, “Pack in your game, fellas. It’s time for chow.” Then he turned to JR. “Burton, you have a COMSAT call in th
e headquarters building in five minutes. You had better get over there now.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Sarge.” Then JR turned to Claudine. “I am still free for the rest of the day. Would you like to do something together this afternoon?”

  “I will give it some thought,” she said. Then she looked at him with her amber eyes. “Yes, I think that it would be nice. I will think of something.” Then she smiled at him and left to join her friends.

  *****

  When JR walked into the headquarters building, the Sergeant directed him to sit in front of a laptop in a cubicle in the corner of the room.

  Within a few minutes, the image of JR’s father appeared on the laptop’s screen.

  “Hello, JR,” Frank Burton said.

  “Hi, Pop,” said JR. “You look very tired. I am sorry to wake you.”

  “It is 2:30 here, but you did not wake me, Son. I have not been sleeping well lately.”

  “Do you have a new case that is bothering you?”

  “Yes. It has been very difficult. The victim is Governor Jamieson’s son. Under normal circumstances, that would make it a very difficult case. With this being an election year for the Governor, the pressure from this case is incomparable.”

  “I am sorry for you, Pop.”

  “Yeah, I am sorry for me too.”

  Burton smiled at JR.

  Then Burton asked, “How is your new assignment, JR?”

  “I am sure that it’s going to be a bear. We are right on the front line, right in the teeth of the Taliban. But we are tough, Pop. We’ll be okay.”

  “And, how is the base?”

  “Well, it is hardly a base, Pop. It is a forward outpost, and, unfortunately, it is not easily defended.”

  “It cannot be that bad, can it, JR?”

  “Well, let’s put it this way, Pop. The guys who are here – and anybody who has ever been here – refer to this place as Camp Custer.”

  “Custer? I don’t like the sound of that.”