The Fourth Perimeter

by Tim Green

  Intuitively, Reeves turned and began to run. He didn’t bother going for the woods. He ran straight out into the driveway and started up the hill. He was nearly to the top when the lights of the police cruiser lit the trees off to his left. He dashed into the woods and behind a large tree. As soon as the car passed, he bolted back out to the driveway and continued his sprint up the hill. He saw the cruiser turn left. His own vehicle was across the road and up a gravel drive that led to a small rural airstrip. Fumbling with his keys as he ran, Reeves jumped into the car, fired up the engine, and tore out onto West Lake Road in hot pursuit of the cop car.

  Three miles later, he crested a big hill and could see the gleaming taillights of the cop car on the next ridge. He stepped on the gas and dug the phone out of his pack to speed-dial his boss.

  “It’s me, Reeves,” he said at the sound of the abrasive voice on the other end.

  “Hang on,” his boss said curtly. There was a fumbling noise and Reeves thought he heard the voices of other people before he heard the rude demand, “What?”

  “I need instructions,” he said. He was rewarded with an impatient huff.

  “A cop came and took Ford away,” he continued. “I thought maybe it was about the girl, but—”

  “What?” his boss cried. “What the hell are you talking about? What cop?”

  “I think it was a state trooper,” Reeves said. “I don’t know. It’s dark here and there’s a storm.”

  “Go get him! Did you lose him?”

  Reeves smiled broadly to himself. That’s why he made the big bucks. His instincts were the best. “I’m right behind them,” he said, smirking.

  “Follow them,” his boss said, pausing to consider the situation before continuing. His voice was on edge. “Follow them and keep me informed. Let me know everything and don’t let anything happen to Ford! I mean it. Don’t let anything happen to him. Do whatever it takes, but stay with him and let me know the minute you figure out what the hell’s going on. Where’s Vanecroft?”

  “At the hotel.”

  “Well, get him out there with you. I don’t want this going bad. I need Ford! You get him back. Do whatever you have to do, but keep everything quiet.”

  Reeves hung up. He dialed Vanecroft and filled him in. His partner said he could be there in twenty minutes. Going ninety, Reeves was gaining quickly on the police cruiser.

  At the top of the next hill, Reeves had closed the gap considerably. In case the cop was alert, he put his signal light on and began to slow down. As soon as the cop car disappeared over the next ridge, he flicked off his headlights as well as the turn signal and raced ahead in the dark, using the flickering sky and the cruiser’s taillights as his guides. The brief flashes of lightning were the only things that illuminated the car enough to be spotted. But with a wet rear window, he was confident the cop wouldn’t see him.

  When the police car left the main road and turned again onto a gravel drive, Reeves stopped to dial his boss.

  “He’s not taking Ford to a police station,” he reported. “It’s got to be a house or a farm or something. There’s nothing out here and they turned off the road.”

  There was silence for a moment and then, “Go get him. Go get Ford. And Reeves—don’t leave any witnesses behind. Do what you do best and clean up any mess you make.”

  Reeves’s hand crept involuntarily to the Glock under his arm. The thrill washed over him like heavy surf. He turned carefully into the gravel drive. Without the cruiser’s taillights to guide him up the narrow lane, the going was much slower. The lightning helped, but the intervals of pitch-black seemed to be lengthening, and twice he was forced to stop completely. It was painfully slow, but he was determined not to give away his approach or to drive his car off the road. As he worked his way slowly along, he called Vanecroft again to give him directions.

  When he came to the house, Reeves pulled his car off on the grass and got out. Now he thought he had an idea of what was happening. He recalled a conversation the girl Jill had had with Ford nearly a month ago. She’d been hit by a car, and a few days later the farmer who’d hit her rode his bike around the lake with her. Reeves remembered it because he’d expected Ford to have trouble with the girl. He personally wouldn’t have allowed her to keep hanging around with the guy. The trooper must have some connection to the farmer. Could he be the farmer? Reeves could only guess that the girl had somehow convinced her new friends or friend to kidnap Ford to keep him from carrying out his plan.

  If the cop had taken Ford inside, it was quite likely the girl would be there as well. Reeves looked at his watch. If he moved fast, he might get a double kill before Vanecroft even arrived. Already decked out in camouflage, he moved confidently in the dark, across the front of the house, and around back where the drive led to a group of barns. There was a dim light coming from one of them and he sprinted toward it. When he got there, he pulled up abruptly outside the big door and peered carefully inside. The cruiser sat there in the middle of the barn with its headlights burning bright, the driver’s door open, and the dome light spilling a weak yellow glow around the radius of the car. Reeves gritted his teeth when he realized the great gray hump on the dirt floor beside the car was the inert body of the cop.

  He walked cautiously inside, his eyes suspiciously roving the darkened corners. “Ford!” he cried out. “It’s okay. I’m here to help you.”

  The oppressive, dank air and the heavy stacks of damp hay quickly swallowed up the sound of his voice. The last thing he needed was a panicked man shooting at him from the shadows.

  “Ford?” he bellowed uncertainly.

  When he reached the body, Reeves quickly read the signs of the struggle and knew that Kurt Ford had escaped. He went to the opening in the barn door and peered out into the flickering night. He almost jumped out of his shoes when he turned around to the sight of the big cop sitting up and staring bleary-eyed at him while he rubbed the back of his great pumpkin head. There was a bleeding lump on his temple that had already swollen to the size of a plum.

  Reeves smiled and walked toward the cop. “He really lambasted you, didn’t he?” he said with an evil grin. “A real headache?”

  The cop nodded painfully but scowled at Reeves, obviously wondering who he was and what had happened.

  “I got something for it,” Reeves said. His voice had a giddy edge that sounded bizarre in the eerie light of the muffled hay barn.

  In one quick motion he drew the silenced Glock from under his jacket and clanked off a heavy round right into the big trooper’s forehead. Jeremiah jerked backward with a puzzled look, then dropped flat on his back and flopped about for nearly a minute, spouting blood like a wild twisting garden hose. Finally, after a violent shudder, he exhaled peacefully and lay still.

  CHAPTER 33

  Kurt was miles from his home, but he found the main road after less than an hour and started back. Every time a car came from either direction, he ducked off the road, either behind some trees or into the ditch if there was no other cover. The passing storm had brought with it some relief from the heat, and he began to shiver in his wet clothes. His feet sloshed uncomfortably in the pair of leather moccasins he wore, but he pushed it out of his mind and tried to figure out what had just happened.

  It wasn’t too long before he began to believe that the trooper just couldn’t be connected with the people who had killed Collin. He and the trooper had been alone, but they shouldn’t have been. Or, if they were alone, and this cop was one of the lethal killers used by the president, then he shouldn’t have tried to take Kurt out of the car the way he did. The people who killed Collin were better than that. They wouldn’t have blundered. Kurt would now be dead.

  “Jill,” he muttered—and then he knew.

  Kurt felt a glow of joy rise up inside him. It could all still work. The trooper was somehow connected to Jill. Like Reeves, Kurt too remembered the conversation he had had with Jill a month earlier. She had talked about a farmer whom she rode bikes with and said
that if it was all right with him she was going to do it again. Could the giant trooper be the same man? He supposed a man could run a farm and be a cop too. Either the man was the farmer or a very close friend of the farmer’s. Whatever the case, Kurt was convinced that the farm he’d just escaped belonged to the man Jill had befriended.

  If that were true, then he had a lot less to worry about. The president and his men still didn’t know about Kurt’s plan. Neither were Collin’s killers hot on his trail. Only Jill could stop him. She and her friend who was now chained inside the barn had failed. Kurt loosened his grip on the trooper’s pistol and picked up his pace.

  It was more than three hours before he turned down his own drive. His feet were in bad shape, chafed and sore, when he hobbled into the house. The power was back on and he immediately began shutting off what few lights were on in the house. He went to the fridge and gulped some skim milk straight from the carton. It was well past midnight. He needed to sleep because if he didn’t he wouldn’t be sharp for tomorrow. Tomorrow was everything.

  Upstairs, Kurt took a shower. Clean and exhausted, but still wired, he gulped down two sleeping pills. As a precaution, he pushed the bed right up against the door. With the trooper’s .45 in hand, he climbed into bed and waited for sleep to come.

  The alarm went off at seven-thirty, and Kurt flew from his bed quickly, trying to comprehend everything that had happened. It was a minute or so before he separated his dreams from what had really happened during the night. He took several deep breaths and blinked at the bright sunlight spilling in through the window. He crossed the bedroom with the gun still in his hand and turned on the TV for the local news.

  He didn’t expect to learn that the police were out looking for a man who’d thumped a state trooper on the head, but it felt good to watch the news and not see anything unusual. Of course, the biggest news of all was the president’s visit. What local restaurant or store people thought he was going to visit next had become a surprisingly popular sport. Two of the more popular spots, Johnny Angyl’s Heavenly Hamburgers and Doug’s Fish Fry, had a highly publicized contest to see who could bring the president through their doors. The whole town was thrilled when he visited both. There was also no shortage of grinning Jane and John Does to fill the screen with smarmy anecdotes about how far they’d come just to get a glimpse of the president, let alone shake his hand.

  “And,” the morning newscaster continued with a toothy grin, “after a round of golf today at Bellvue Country Club with Governor George Pataki, DEC commissioner John Cahill, and the national GOP chairman, Butch Reynolds, President Parkes will be ‘gone fishin’.’ The final stop on the president’s upstate New York vacation itinerary calls for a three-hour angling excursion on Skaneateles Lake with high-tech billionaire Kurt Ford. Ford, the chairman and founder of Safe Tech, with a lakefront summer home in Skaneateles, is ironically a former Secret Service agent who protected Presidents Carter and Reagan. The high-tech magnate is expected to discuss the upcoming initiative on the proposed Internet tax with the president. Now for a look at our weather, here’s—”

  Kurt muted the TV, no longer able to bear the cheesy banter. Calmly, he watched the map come up with bright yellow sun symbols across the state—sun and temperatures in the low eighties. Kurt couldn’t have asked for anything better. Sunset was at seven fifty-eight. They were scheduled to cast off at three, which probably meant four.

  By six-thirty, the president would be dead.

  CHAPTER 34

  The president was in a wonderful mood. He’d just taken five hundred dollars from the unwilling governor in a game of skins. So jovial was Parkes that he told Mack Taylor to have the car stop in town. He wanted to walk around a little. His wife was at a local elementary school and he thought he might like strolling the pretty brick sidewalks of the village by himself. He and the first lady had taken just such a stroll only two days ago for the media’s sake, but somehow the prospect seemed so much more enjoyable without her.

  “There,” he said spontaneously, pointing to a little coffee shop in the center of town. “I want a cappuccino.”

  Traffic going either way on Route 20, which ran straight through the town, had already been stopped. The motorcade pulled to a stop in front of the Vermont Green Mountain Specialty Company. Agents piled out of their Suburbans and hovered alongside the street. The CAT team stayed in their vehicle up ahead, their faces belying none of the internal anxiety the president created whenever he made an off-the-record move. A handful of agents that included Mack Taylor quickly formed a makeshift fourth perimeter around the president as he walked into the shop, waving to everyone on the street. Inside, the high school girls who worked behind the counter tittered and grew flushed with excitement and the owner hurried out from the back, wiping her hands nervously on an apron to personally make the president his cappuccino.

  To the chagrin of the agents around him, coffee in hand, the president began a stroll down the main street, waving cheerfully and shaking hands as he went. Mack Taylor was right there beside him, as was Butch Reynolds with a decaf French vanilla. Taylor’s face was devoid of any emotion—only his eyes shifted quickly from one point to another as he talked furtively down into the microphone in his lapel, moving agents like pieces in a speedy game of checkers. The motorcade moved slowly down the street alongside the president and his protectors. When they came to the end of the buildings, the sidewalk crossed a small bridge and opened onto a little park beside the water. The president was struck again by the sheer beauty of the lake. He nodded to himself, understanding why they called it the jewel of the Finger Lakes.

  The water stretched peacefully into the distance between the rolling hills quilted with farmland and hardwoods. The sky, cobalt blue after the previous night’s storm, was marred only by a few random puffs of pure white cloud. Next to the long pier that jutted out from the center of town into the lake were public docks. Vacationing families dressed in shorts, polo shirts, and Docksiders stopped what they were doing to point and sometimes wave at the imposing figure of their president. Parkes waved back heartily.

  “If you’ve got to go fishing,” he said placidly, turning to Reynolds, “this is sure the time and the place to do it.”

  Reynolds’s face, flushed from a day in the sun, broke out in a broad grin. It was nice to hear that the event he had agreed to was no longer irksome to the president. It had to be done. The money was too much to pass up.

  “Maybe I’ll even catch something,” Parkes muttered.

  “I’m sure you will, Mr. President,” Reynolds said in his heavy southern drawl.

  “Okay,” Parkes said, “let’s go.”

  During the ride to Kurt Ford’s estate, the president fretted to Reynolds about whether or not Ford would have the beer he liked on the boat. Michelob Light was his favorite, and that’s what he expected to get. Reynolds, apparently unfazed by his boss’s frivolous concerns, assured him all that had been taken care of. He also went over the arrangements the press secretary had made with the media. There was an area on the grounds where they could shoot him arriving, as well as a spot on the dock where they could get him leaving on the fishing boat.

  “Are we doing anything special for him, you know,” the president said uneasily, “regarding his son?”

  “No,” Reynolds said somberly. “We were advised that it was best just to offer your condolences rather than make a big thing about it. You know how it is with a suicide . . .”

  The president looked outside his window and nodded without comment.

  As they rolled past the state troopers who were posted on the first perimeter at the entrance to the drive, Parkes peered curiously down the hill for a glimpse of the billionaire’s home. But the drive was curved and he wasn’t able to see anything except trees until they were nearly at the bottom of the hill, as the thick woods opened onto a spacious lawn with beautiful gardens, towering trees, and a magnificent old home that had obviously been refurbished. At intervals around the yard was the second
perimeter, a mixture of agents wearing fishing vests and khaki pants and state troopers in their gray uniforms, purple ties, and tall hats.

  The press area snapped to life and cameras began to roll. Kurt Ford stood waiting on the front steps with Agent Morris and Marty Mulligan. They were inside the third perimeter of agents who surrounded the house and the boathouse beyond. When the president stepped out of the car to shake hands, photos began to flash. The CAT team got out of their black Suburban and casually dispersed. The fourth perimeter was made up of the agents in the follow-up car, and Kurt Ford stood inside them all with the president of the United States.

  “I was so sorry to hear about your son,” Parkes blurted out the moment he grasped Ford’s hand.

  A shadow of pain crossed Kurt’s face, but he regained his composure so quickly that few people, including the president, who was looking at Mulligan, even noticed it. Kurt took them through the house and out onto the back veranda, asking the president if he wanted a drink there or if he preferred to get right out on the boat. The president was ready to fish.

  CHAPTER 35

  As a group, the president and his entourage meandered down the walkway that led to the stony beach and the large old boathouse. Kurt, who had prepared a list of topics in his mind to keep conversation fluid throughout the afternoon, was relieved that his guest turned out to be quite voluble. The idea of perpetuating the facade of a pleasant admirer had troubled Kurt all day. But Parkes was as charming as he was imposing and Kurt didn’t have to worry about his deep-seated hatred boiling to the surface. The president talked so much that Kurt was able to mold his face into a permanent smile and actually take time to assess his odds of success.

  At the beginning of the day, he had undergone a strange experience with David Claiborne. It was the first time Kurt had spoken to his old friend since the night Claiborne saved his life in Maryland. That was almost two months ago and it seemed like another lifetime. As the lead advance agent, Claiborne was busy supervising the setup of the Service’s temporary command post in Kurt’s garage. Claiborne seemed distracted, and Kurt could understand why, with two new sites to secure—his home as well as a golf course—in a single day. When Agent Morris introduced them at the front door, Claiborne was pleasant but distant. Kurt followed suit. And although Kurt searched his old friend’s face carefully for some insight into his thoughts, Claiborne wore a mask of stone.