Chaim’s finger moved to the trigger.
Calmness.
The driver paused at the rear of the big SUV, then opened the rear passenger-side door.
Inhale. Hold. Chaim trained his rifle into the door’s void.
A woman’s blonde head appeared.
Shit. Chaim tried to move his sights off her and back into the void of the car door opening, but she remained in the way. He exhaled and inhaled in rapid succession, again holding the inhalation.
Shit. Shit. The woman lingered near the doorway, talking to the person inside, blocking the bullet’s line of travel to where he knew the CEO would appear.
She tossed her head back slightly, laughing.
Move!
Exhale. Inhale. Hold.
The woman shifted her weight slightly to the left, and started to turn away.
A man suddenly came into view.
He was the one.
John Averett, CEO of Langston Marlin.
Chaim merely thought of adding pressure to the trigger with his right index finger. Pop. He barely heard the silenced report over the tree leaves rustling in the breeze.
A word had begun to form on Averett’s lips when the large slug arrived, striking him just below his left eye. His body crumpled, mottled crimson spraying the car window.
Chaim saw the driver crouch, reaching into his jacket holster for his sidearm.
The woman vomited.
Chaim quickly disassembled the rifle, wrapped the pieces separately in a yoga mat to avoid clanking through the forest, and replaced the pieces in his pack, along with his binoculars. He placed the expended shell casing in his pocket.
He quickly but quietly made his way through the trees, away from the scene of chaos in the parking lot several hundred meters away.
If his luck held, he would have just enough of a head start.
The driver rushed the sobbing woman inside the building and shouted at the desk attendant to call an ambulance and the police, then dashed back outside to the Suburban.
It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for.
The briefcase was lying by the dead CEO’s side. The clasps were locked, but the driver had memorized the combinations. He didn’t have much time—too little time, in fact, to go about things in a rush. He had long ago learned that in some pursuits, slowing down was by far the fastest way.
Only one clasp opened on the first try. Cursing under his breath, the driver adjusted the second set of numbers. The briefcase opened.
With his own body shielding the line of sight from the glass doors, the driver surveyed the contents of the CEO’s briefcase.
It contained a few manila folders, a pack of gum, a smartphone, and several expensive-looking pens. Off to one side was a sealed manila envelope labeled “SECRET, SPECIAL ACCESS REQUIRED.” He picked up the bulging package and felt its size and shape, being careful not to get any of the CEO’s blood on the interior of the briefcase in the process.
Confident he had the right package, he slipped the sealed envelope into his jacket pocket. He slammed the case closed, latched the clasps on either side of the handle, and spun the combination lock for both fasteners.
The driver pivoted slightly and placed his hand on the CEO’s neck, as if he were checking for a pulse. It struck him as an obviously ludicrous thing to do, as the back half of the man’s head was missing and there was no way he could possibly still be alive, but the driver needed a plausible reason to be crouched next to the body.
He heard the sliding door open, heard a chorus of shocked gasps and curses as Aberdeen personnel spilled from the building.
Seconds later, he heard the sirens approach.
Couldn’t have timed it any better, the driver thought.
Mullah would be pleased.
Chaim hustled to reach the single dirt road that bisected his path to the bay. He wanted to be well clear of the road before the police began their search in earnest.
He crossed carefully, taking time to ensure no traffic approached before leaving the concealment of the dense undergrowth, using a branch to obscure his footsteps as he crossed the dirt road.
He disappeared back into the thick forest on the other side. He knew his precautions were necessary, but wouldn’t slow a skilled tracker for long. He had to keep moving.
He withdrew the cell phone from its place in his pocket and turned it on. As soon as there was power, he made sure the phone was silenced. A ringing phone wouldn’t be helpful.
Within seconds, the phone vibrated briefly. He had expected this, and opened the text message. It contained a series of numbers.
He took out his GPS and stopped walking long enough to type in the numbers. 39.406625. 76.157768. It didn’t take long for the handheld navigation system to provide a bearing and distance from his location to the coordinates contained in the text message.
The coordinates were important. They located the raft Farhoud had hidden for him.
Shit. The spot was on the other side of a prominent ridge. To get to the raft, Chaim would either have to risk exposure by going over the ridge, or he would have to take a lengthy detour around the promontory.
There was no time to go around. He had to go over.
He made his way through the forest, now moving almost due south. The undergrowth grew sparser as he approached the top of the ridge, and he felt more exposed.
Despite his discomfort, he stuck to his training. Slow down to get there faster. Farhoud’s voice in his head again. He crouched low as he approached the ridge, and forced himself to lie down on the ground and wait.
He heard nothing but his own breathing.
After a short while, he rose to a crouch and began moving uphill toward the crest. After two steps, he heard a sharp rustle of leaves.
His heart leapt into his throat, and he instantly froze, holding his breath. His pulse pounded in his ears.
Squirrel.
He exhaled slowly and continued his ascent, crawling on his belly across the broad crest.
He began the descent down the other side of the hill and heard the unmistakable burble of a stream. Getting close.
Another sound made his blood run cold. Dogs barking.
They sounded close – are they on the road just one ridge over? How had they tracked him so quickly? His firing position must have been obvious by the way the CEO’s body lay.
Panic crept in to the edges of his consciousness. He picked up the pace, aware that his feet were no longer quietly caressing the forest floor, and were now snapping branches and leaving both an audible and visible trail behind him.
But he had no choice. The baying of the dogs was growing louder. Just a little further.
The GPS receiver’s distance read 0.00. Where was it? He didn’t see the marker.
The dogs were just on the other side of the ridge from him.
Another bark sounded off to his left, terrifyingly close, and Chaim began to panic.
He thought of swimming to safety. It was a ludicrous thought, but he was running out of alternatives. He headed toward the stream.
Just then, the faded orange marker flag caught his eye. He moved toward it and saw the familiar “C” painted in black ink on the orange flag.
Next to the flag, wedged beneath a bush, was a bundle of thick black rubber. He hefted the folded raft and carried it to the water. He fumbled until he found the inflation cord.
He tugged sharply, and the loud hiss of the CO2 bottle drowned out the sound of the baying search dogs.
He threw the half-inflated raft into the water, jumped in behind it, and kicked away from the shore.
The dogs were horrifyingly close.
When it felt inflated enough to support his weight, Chaim struggled into the raft and paddled wildly with both hands. He aimed out of the small inlet and into the swift Chesapeake current moving left to right in front of him.
He saw the dogs emerge from the dense forest just as he rounded the lip of the inlet.
The current carrie
d him south toward the ocean. He breathed a sigh of relief as the dogs disappeared around the inlet, hidden behind the dense forest.
He didn’t stop paddling until the Aberdeen Proving Grounds were no longer visible. He lay in the bottom of the raft, shaking from fear and exertion.
As dusk settled, he could see the flashing police lights several miles in the distance.
Had he made it?
Time would tell.
Just as he was beginning to relax, horror descended upon him again in a rush. My backpack. It was nowhere to be found.
22
Fredericksburg, VA. Friday, 4:12 p.m. ET.
Thierrot was in a hurry, but drove with restraint. Over the past half hour, he had fielded half a dozen calls from his boss and his deputy, who both wondered what the hell could possibly be more important than the murder investigation Thierrot was supposedly running. He put them off, for the moment, but he didn’t have much time.
Traffic had been light through Fredericksburg, and despite the late afternoon hour on a weekday, only miles from the automotive black hole that was Washington, DC, there were only a few other cars driving on the two-lane divided highway.
He headed east out of Fredericksburg on Route 17, famous for its picturesque views, and soon reached the intersection of Highway 301. He turned back north, passed the collection of restaurants beside the highway in the small, nameless town that had grown up around the highway crossing, and crossed the bridge over the Rappahannock River.
Getting close.
He pulled the cheap cell phone out of his jacket, along with the SIM card he had retrieved from the spare tire compartment in his trunk.
He fished out the phone number on the shard of paper that he had torn from the lost-dog notice posted in the apartment office.
With a practiced knee, he kept the car on the road while he fumbled with the cell phone. He didn’t know what the old priest might have been keeping in his wallet to warrant such extreme risk, but Thierrot hoped it was something exceptionally important.
He dropped the SIM down between his legs, cursed softly to himself, and reached down to retrieve it from the floorboard.
A long blast from a car horn frighteningly close to him brought his attention back to the road, and he quickly jerked the big sedan back into his own lane. He waved to the suddenly irate driver next to him, and mouthed the word “sorry.”
Get yourself together, James Fucking Bond, he chided himself silently. A car wreck certainly wouldn’t help get this over with any faster.
His next try to retrieve the wayward SIM card from the floorboard was successful, and a short while later, he had the card properly installed in the back of the disposable phone. He pressed the power button, and the cheap phone came to life.
He typed the number from the piece of paper. He felt the tide of adrenaline crash uncomfortably in his stomach, and did his best to stay relaxed as he pushed the “call” button.
“We weren’t expecting visitors today.” The voice was terse but professional. Thierrot didn’t recognize it. It never failed to scare the hell out of him when a new handler appeared on the other end of these types of exchanges. He always had to fight the sudden feeling of panic as he wondered whether he had been compromised.
He forced himself to steady his mind. “I was just in the neighborhood. Can I bring you anything?”
There was a long pause, and Thierrot found himself holding his breath.
“No, thank you. We’ll make a place for you.” The voice wasn’t friendly, but wasn’t unfriendly either, and he couldn’t place the accent. It sounded vaguely foreign, which wasn’t unusual, but Thierrot would have had trouble guessing a continent, much less a country.
The connection was severed before he could reply. The slightly awkward phrase rung in his ears: make a place for you. “Place” was the key word. Parra’s Automotive Place.
He was only a couple of miles away, if he wasn’t mistaken. The realization made his heart pound in his chest, and a fresh dose of adrenaline coursed through his veins. He had vaguely hoped for a few more miles of road time to steel himself for the nerve-wracking contact with his handlers. Making contact was always extremely risky, and he forced himself to breathe deeply.
He rounded a slight bend in the road, and saw the signs of civilization in the distance. There was little more than pasture, crop, and forest in rural Virginia, and all of the small towns in the vicinity had suffered badly in the recent recession. Long past their 1950’s heyday, many had been barely hanging on to begin with, and the crash of 2008 had been the final blow for several dozen farming towns in the region.
Edgemont was one such town. Waist-high weeds adorned every parking lot and obscured dilapidated buildings in various states of disrepair. A burned-out campfire betrayed a small group of squatters, but the entire town was otherwise completely deserted.
Thierrot scanned the ramshackle buildings on the east side of the road, relics from a half-century ago. If a Norman Rockwell painting aged badly, it might turn into this. Ancient gas pumps and outmoded buildings stood as remnants of an unsophisticated time long since passed.
On the northern outskirts of town, Thierrot finally saw it. His adrenaline coursed anew at the sight of the worn-out red paint on the chipped white concrete building that announced Parra’s Automotive Place.
It was a three-bay service garage with a shabby little waiting room and office on its north side. A worn-out pickup truck had been left to rot where it died in the weed-filled lot adjacent to the building. A single car lift remained in place, too rusted to have been any use for scavengers.
Thierrot pulled into the overgrown drive and slowly drove around to the back of the building. He knew better than to leave his vehicle where it could be spotted from the road. As he passed the side of the building, a disused storage shed became visible.
He sidled his sedan next to the back of the garage and slowly got out of the car.
He saw no signs of life or vehicle tracks that would indicate anyone had arrived to meet him, but he continued with his instructions perfectly. Absolute compliance with meeting protocols had been drilled into his head over the years.
With open, empty hands at his sides, he walked slowly toward the storage shed. He felt a sharp sting through his thin polyester suit pants, and he cursed under his breath as he removed a thistle from mid-thigh. He had already begun thinking of a smart comment about the meeting location as he rounded the corner into the dark opening of the storage shed.
He didn’t get the opportunity to share his sarcasm.
He felt a crushing blow to his solar plexus.
The wind escaped his lungs, and he doubled over in instant agony. A second blow sent him sprawling to the concrete. He felt the weight of a large man pin him to the ground.
It was many seconds before Thierrot could draw a breath, and as he did, a gloved hand smothered his mouth and nose. He felt a sharp prick in his shoulder, followed by a burning sensation.
He felt a strange warmth come over him, and his vision began to swim.
Within seconds, he was unconscious.
Thierrot felt cold and vaguely frustrated. He couldn’t understand why he was cold, and he couldn’t understand why he couldn’t curl up for warmth.
His consciousness lacked focus. No sooner would he form the intention to warm himself than his mind would wander off somewhere else.
He had the vague sense that something else, a very important thing, needed tending to, but he couldn’t figure out what that might be.
Coldness again. And pain. Not a dull pain, but a sharp, jagged pain. It came with each breath. And the coldness. So much coldness.
Why would his arms not move? Or his legs? One’s legs and arms should really do what they were told.
A blinding light shone into just one eye. Why had that eye opened, and where was all that light coming from? Before he could figure it out, his eye shut again.
Then his other eye opened, through no intention of his own. More blinding ligh
t, and a loud beeping.
Was that the important thing? To make the loud beeping stop? And the painful brightness?
No, it was something else.
Coldness, jaggedness, and no movement from his limbs. This was all quite a problem. Something should be done.
And those murmurings. The voices seemed like something he should be able to understand, if he could only concentrate on them.
But he was so tired. Maybe that was the thing. He needed more sleep.
No, the real problem was something else.
But he would think about it later. Right now, it seemed too hard to stay awake.
23
Arlington, Virginia. Friday, 4:24 p.m. ET.
Brock James had enjoyed quite a day. He was chopping onions and garlic in his kitchen, smiling as he recalled the earlier fireworks.
The go-to-hell e-mail he sent to his boss, Major General Charlie Landers, had elicited the expected response, and Brock had fought to conceal his amusement as the short two-star had unleashed an expletive-laced fury.
The little man’s bald head had turned beet red, and at one point during the tirade, a whirligig of spittle had jetted from his mouth and stuck to his cheek. Brock had kept his composure by looking away quickly, though he was pretty sure that the general had detected the beginnings of a laugh.
It was rarely prudent to energize one’s enemies, but in this case, Brock knew there was little to lose. The general had already driven the last nail in the coffin with the below-average performance report he had written on Brock, and Brock had submitted his retirement papers within minutes of reading the report. He still had many months of duty left before his retirement date, but at least there was light at the end of the tunnel.
Within minutes of receiving the notice of his retirement approval, Brock had sent the exceptionally candid e-mail describing exactly how he felt about the little guy. If the general’s harangue was any indication, Brock had clearly touched a nerve.
Sublime, Brock thought.
The madness concealed the method: angry men were seldom careful men, and Brock knew that the disagreeable little general had more than a few secrets, some requiring utmost caution.
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 120