The Plan (The Jackson Lowery Trilogy Book 1)

by Kevin P. Chavous

  Jackson added to Ronnie's point, “Also, there is no way anyone else could pick up on the meaning or the place of the meeting unless they knew about the 1789 restaurant. I really think that is the way to go, Ronnie. If you are cool with it, I say we drive closer to D.C. tomorrow, find a pay phone near a gas station and let me leave that message. We can then go to the 1789 Restaurant that evening. What do you say?”

  “I like it, Jack. I'm in. Now, one other thing, what about the rest of tomorrow? And what about this Bill Merchant guy? Should we try to find him? The mercenaries took out Mills. On that, we can be sure. They may want to take out Merchant, too. Jenny had gotten us his information. We need to consider paying him a visit.”

  “That is true, Ronnie. But they are also probably thinking about our next move as well. They could be watching Merchant and waiting on us, hoping to trap us.”

  “All true. Let's sleep on it and hopefully Jenny will be feeling better and can weigh in as well. I am going to prepare some grub. I pulled out some bass that Jenny had in the freezer. It should be thawed by now. How about some fish tonight, Mr. Pescatarian?”

  “With rice?” Jackson said smiling.

  “Of course, my leader. Fish, rice, and greens. Yep, I am definitely out of the Midwest!”

  They both laughed.

  __________

  As board gatherings go, Bill Merchant had a successful day. He liked the new CEO as well as the longtime ITM board chair. Merchant had known the board chair for years and knew that the man was in his corner. Years ago, when Steve Mills and Merchant were trying to identify potential team members for the group, they considered the ITM board chair. Ultimately, they viewed him as a risky proposition. It was also a little too close to home, Merchant thought. Still, he liked the man.

  During various breaks throughout the day, Merchant was making plans to escape for a few days to his own get-away. When they began this venture, each of the six of them designed and developed their own private escape site. Some were overseas, some were underground. With each, however, they would be able to get off the grid for an indeterminate amount of time.

  Timing being what it was, Merchant had prepared both the board chair and the CEO for his upcoming time off. They both embraced Merchant's need to recharge. What they did not know was that Merchant could be back in a few days, a couple of weeks, or never. That really did not matter to him. He had no wife, no family. The one thing that Merchant did learn over the last few days was that he could not control the fluid nature of things. He was convinced, however, that it was time for him to disappear.

  It was not lost on him that Tyler and the others had not been in touch with him since Mills' death. Yes, they knew about his board meeting. But wouldn't they want to reassure him, especially now? No contact at all was certainly not a good thing.

  Merchant looked around nervously as he left Morton's Restaurant in Tyson's Corner and walked to his waiting limo. When the driver opened his door, he glared a bit at the man to make sure it was a familiar face, prompting the driver to ask, “Is everything okay, Mr. Merchant?”

  “Yes, Julio,” Merchant replied. “Everything is great.”

  Julio then drove Merchant to his Great Falls estate. From there, Merchant planned on finalizing his arrangements for his escape. He hoped to be out of the area by early afternoon the next day.

  Careful as he was, he failed to see the spark from the cigarette coming from the dark sedan parked down the street. Inside that car, Livermore watched Merchant intently as he wondered whether his current order to observe would change to an order to kill.

  THURSDAY

  ONE

  It was the scratching sound that woke Jackson up. It seemed like it was coming from the kitchen area. As he slipped out of his bed, the noise grew more pronounced. Jackson snuck down the hall and heard male voices. He was in bare feet and while making his way down the hall, he noticed his feet were wet. Looking down, he saw blood. A lot of it, on the floor, curling between his toes. Jackson bit his knuckles, but kept walking forward toward the kitchen.

  He was almost there when he saw to his right a scraggly bearded man with a large knife in his hands. The man was rubbing the knife blade against the wooden kitchen counter top. That was the scratching noise. Was he sharpening the knife?

  Jackson started to reach at the man, to try to subdue him. He then looked to his left and saw two other men holding Jenny by the arms. She was covered in blood. Looking beyond Jenny, Jack saw that Ronnie was laid out on the floor, either unconscious or dead.

  Jenny looked up at Jackson with pleading eyes. The two men holding her saw Jackson and smiled broadly. On cue, the scraggly bearded man held up the knife, pointed at Jenny and said, “Right on time, Mr. Lowery. We have been expecting you and want you to see this. You think you are a killer? We are going to show you how real killers kill.” The man was laughing sadistically while he spoke.

  Jackson lunged for bearded man, who sliced at Jackson's chest with the knife, forcing Jackson to back up. Jackson felt the warmth of his own blood flow down to his groin.

  The man laughed again. Let's see how much blood squirts from this pretty neck, Mr. Lowery. He then leaned toward Jenny, causing Jackson to scream loudly, “No!” he cried. “God, no!”

  Jackson then woke up to Ronnie standing by his bed and shaking him awake. “Jack, snap out of it, man. Wake up!” Ronnie was saying. “Get up, Jack. You were having a nightmare!”

  Jackson finally got his bearings, sitting up and shaking his head. “Man, Ronnie. That was so real. They were about to slice Jenny's throat and I thought you were dead.” Jackson then grabbed at his chest, looking down to the groin area. “They cut me too. I could feel my own blood.”

  Ronnie sat down on his own bed, across from Jackson, who, by now, was also sitting up. “Combat nightmare. It always happens after your first deadly battle. You are initiated now, Jack.”

  For some reason, Jackson did not find that comment funny and stretched back out on the bed. “What the hell are we doing, Ronnie? I am a college professor, not a black ops guy. What am I going to do when this is done? Will I ever be able to get my old life back or is it the case that when you cross certain lines you can never go back?”

  Ronnie looked at his friend softly, saying, “Jack, my brother. I really don't know if you will ever go back to your old life. Truth is, after all of this, you may not want to. Your focus right now should be survival, minute by minute, day by day. That is the kind of focus that has kept you alive all week and God willing, it will see you through this thing to the end. Beyond that, take it one day at a time. Just one day at a time.”

  Jackson closed his eyes, trying to drift back to sleep, hoping that no more vivid nightmares would disturb him in his sleep.

  __________

  Try as he might, R.J. could not find Joe Sweeney. The kid was not in his dorm room, nor had he been to any of his classes over the last couple of days. R.J. tried to chat up a couple students in Sweeney's dorm building and the student lounge, but college students have no reason to sell out a peer to someone with as obvious a military bearing as R.J. Tough as it was, he had to let Strother know that the kid had vanished.

  Strother took it better than expected. “Alright, we will come to the kid later. I need you to get to Merchant's home in Great Falls to help back up Livermore. With Mills gone, we are beginning to think that Lowery and Jackson may try to get some answers from Merchant.”

  R.J. was happy to get the new assignment. He had been on edge since this whole thing had started and he needed to let out some aggression. It still bothered him that he let the black cabbie off the hook. The psychopath in him was eager to hurt someone, and the racist in him had developed a personal animus toward Jackson Lowery. Up to this point, Lowery and Thomas had been lucky. As he headed to great Falls, R.J. thought about how he wanted nothing more than to settle a score with Lowery, using his own bare hands.

  ___________

  Safely tucked away in his fri
end's apartment, Joe Sweeney had been checking the reward hotline voicemail most of the night. Just after 7 am, Sweeney recovered a message on the reward hotline that had been left about an hour earlier. Though short and succinct, Sweeney knew it had been left by Jackson Lowery. It simply said, “First Date. Tonight.” Sweeney could not contain himself. He immediately texted Reba Duncan on the iPad he had given her.

  “Contact made!” said his text. “Let's discuss.”

  Less than thirty seconds passed before he received her reply. “Calling you now!” His phone buzzed on his computer.

  “Hi, Mrs. Duncan. It looks like we are in.”

  “What did he say, Joe? How can you be sure?”

  When he played the message for her, she was convinced. “This is too good to be true, Joe. And you are sure that nobody else can access the message?”

  “Trust me, Mrs. Duncan, we are totally clear. Should we meet beforehand?”

  “Yes, Joe. Meet me there around 6 pm. We can then get our ducks lined up. I will reserve their Garden Room. It is a private dining room for about fifteen to twenty people. We definitely need to be away from the general public.”

  “Sounds good to me, Mrs. Duncan. See you then!”

  “Joe, before you go, one more thing. This thing is getting more and more dangerous. How far are you from where the restaurant is right now?” Sweeney had told Reba that he was staying at a friend's apartment near the school.

  “I am only about five blocks away,” he said.

  “Good. Promise me that you will stay where you are until tonight. I mean it, Joe. Don't go anywhere. Okay?”

  “Gotcha, Mrs. Duncan. They have plenty of food here and with a computer nearby, I am like a kid on a playground.”

  “Alright. Please sit tight until later. Bye, Joe.”

  After hanging up the phone, Reba had to face whether or not to tell her husband about the new development. When he came home last night, he asked her to promise that she would keep him apprised of her activities relating to finding Amy's killer. She could tell that he knew she was holding back. But she could not bring herself to come clean.

  Should she bring him in now? Reba played over and over in her mind what would happen once she told Rex what she suspected and what she knows. She knew how her husband was wired. His first instinct would be to reach out to some heavy-duty law enforcement types. The F.B.I., maybe even the D.C. Police chief. Those were logical moves to make under the circumstances. But Joe's roommate Finn did the exact same thing and it got him killed.

  If there was some crazy conspiracy at play, it went to the highest levels. It had to if Mills and Merchant were both involved. No, Reba reasoned to herself, now was not the time to bring in Rex. She needed to have a tighter package of facts to share with him. Facts that would confirm what Reba suspected and, at the same time, would give Rex pause about seeking help through the traditional channels. Tonight, she would go it alone with Joe, the young college student and her new partner in crime. She picked up the phone to call her husband who by now was almost at his office to let him know that she would be having dinner with some friends in the evening.

  __________

  Jackson and Ronnie had woken up early in order to drive halfway to D.C. to call the reward hotline. When they left, Jenny was still fast asleep. As a sign of the times, they stopped at a couple of gas stations and convenience stores in Manassas only to find that none of the places had any pay phones nearby. They finally walked into a Denny's, where one of the waitresses said they could use her phone. Jackson was hesitant at first, not wanted to draw her into the line of fire. His hesitancy vanished when she handed him the phone saying, “Make sure your call is on the up and up. That is my boyfriend's phone and he is a Virginia State Trooper.” Jackson happily mocked a fake salute.

  “Will do,” he said to her. After leaving the quick message, he and Ronnie hurried back to Bryce to check on Jenny.

  By the time they got back, Jenny was awake and brewing coffee. She looked sort of stunned to see them as if she were still getting her bearings, but then she held out her arms and said, “Group hug!” Jackson and Ronnie readily complied. As they did their post-mortem of the previous day's activities, Jenny kept beating herself up about missing the head shot for the fourth bad guy. “I had his head in my sights. He should be dead.”

  She admitted, however, that she was surprised that the bad guys were able to trace her computer searches. “I blocked my browser and used all of the security walls that worked well in the past. I also was using a secured phone when I left Reagan airport. Their tech folks are really good. And, I am getting old and rusty in all areas.”

  Jackson and Ronnie just shook their heads. “You still have a lot of fight left, Jen,” Ronnie said.

  They then updated her about the reward hotline and Jackson's message. She agreed that the reply message should work. They all thought it would be best to go to the 1789 Restaurant en masse. Since Jenny said she felt strong enough to be a part of the effort, she was designated to go to the restaurant first to check it out. Other than the bad guys, no one knew that a woman was helping Jackson Lowery, so she would be the best person to run advance at the restaurant.

  They also discussed whether they should go find Merchant and lean on him. Jenny liked the idea, but was more intrigued by seeing what the Reba Duncan meeting would bring them. “Let's face it,” she said, “if Reba Duncan is on board and is able to bring her husband along with her, he has the resources to get to the bottom of this easier than we could through this Merchant guy.”

  Jackson was nodding in agreement, but Ronnie voiced opposition. “I understand your point and following the letter of the law in principle, I would agree. But trust me, if you leave me alone in a room with Bill Merchant, I guarantee that I will get all the information we need to know a lot quicker than the senator would using his channels and process.”

  All Jenny could say was, “Point taken.”

  Key to all of this was whether there was an imminent threat to the lives and safety of innocent children based on what Amy Duncan had heard. If all of this was still in the planning phase, a few days would not make a difference. But if it was something that could happen sooner rather than later, that was another story. Jackson reminded them that Amy related what she had heard in the context of Mills and Merchant believing that her dad becoming president would help them.

  They agreed to wait until the dinner that evening. The weekend was starting, so the earliest anything diabolical could occur would be early next week, which was clearly unlikely. They would process and rethink things after seeing Reba Duncan.

  The three sat at Jenny's kitchen table sipping coffee like old friends until the physical toll from yesterday started to grind Jenny down a bit. Jackson could see it in her eyes. She looked “a bit peaked” as his grandmother used to say. She excused herself and went back to bed.

  When they heard her door close, Ronnie whispered to Jackson, “Now let's go get that Merchant bastard.” He was smiling like a Cheshire Cat.

  Jackson soft punched him in the arm. “Man, I ain't messing with Jenny. She won’t miss that head shot if it is aimed at me!” They laughed, but later wished that they had followed up on Ronnie's suggestion and visited Bill Merchant that morning. It would have made things a whole lot easier.

  __________

  Bill Merchant was still planning to go on his indefinite vacation, but had to wait a little longer than he would have liked. He received a call from the airlines indicating that the second leg of his trip to Australia had been canceled and that he could take a couple of more flights in order to get to Sydney, arriving three hours later than originally planned, or he could wait until the next morning and get there even earlier than his original flight would have gotten him there. Reluctantly, he decided to wait. He did not know, of course, that his travel agent had been paid a mighty sum to keep him in the states one more day.

  Livermore and R.J. were still positioned on Merchant's block.
Since they were in two separate cars, they could alternate between food and bathroom breaks. R.J. was sill eager to hurt someone and he kept asking Livermore if their orders had changed. Livermore assured him that it was just a matter of time.

  TWO

  Jenny was refreshed and ready to assume her role as the advance person for Jackson's meeting with Reba Duncan. Looking resplendent in her black slacks, thick white turtleneck sweater and black silk-cotton blend jacket, it was hard to believe that she was in the middle of a gun battle just a day earlier. She actually drove the Grand Cherokee from Bryce Mountain to D.C. while Ronnie sat up front with her and Jackson sat in the back seat behind Ronnie. The tinted windows made it almost impossible to see Jackson clearly from outside of the car.

  It was understood that Jackson and Ronnie would drop Jenny several blocks from the restaurant while they would park in the lot across the street from Georgetown's Cafe Milano. Ronnie was increasingly suspicious about the meeting, but Jackson was determined to go. As a result of Ronnie’s urging, however, they all agreed that Jenny would go to the restaurant first in order to gauge the mood. If she felt comfortable, she would contact Ronnie with the okay. Ronnie had given Jenny a new, clean phone. Jenny would call them when it was time for them to walk into the restaurant.

  While Jackson, Ronnie, and Jenny drove to D.C. from the Shenandoah area, Reba Duncan was the first one to arrive at the 1789 Restaurant. She had just been seated in the private dining room, which could accommodate nearly twenty people. The hostess who sat her down asked her how many people she was expecting. Reba, trying to avoid drawing too much attention to herself, quietly said, “Just a few, thank you.” The hostess then went back to her station by the front door.

  She returned soon thereafter to show Sweeney to the room. Reba greeted Sweeney with a hug and said, “I am nervous. I should have told my husband. What am I doing here? What if this man did kill my Amy?”