Run and Hide

by Alan McDermott

  Driscoll stood ten feet away from him, the Glock in her hand pointing at his chest.

  West froze, and it felt like the blood in his veins followed suit. “How the hell did you get in here?” he asked. “And where’s my wife?”

  Driscoll said nothing. Instead, she took two steps to the right and motioned with the gun toward the kitchen.

  With his arms raised to shoulder height, he walked down the short hallway, privately thankful that she was sending him in this direction. In a cupboard just inside the kitchen door, he had a 9mm Sig Sauer Pro, the safety already off. If he could remain a few yards ahead of her, he should be able to run in, grab the weapon, and have it trained on the doorway by the time she came through.

  His gait became more confident as he quickened the pace slightly, but when he drew level with the basement door, Driscoll ordered him to halt. He was tantalizingly close to the kitchen and decided to risk it. If she was there to kill him, she would have done it by now. She wanted him alive, and he was willing to bet his life that she wouldn’t shoot.

  He managed two more steps before a blond-haired man appeared in the kitchen doorway. He had the Sig in his right hand, and the barrel was pointing at West’s legs.

  “Back up or lose a kneecap.”

  West recognized the accent as British, and the no-nonsense look on the gunman’s face made him stop in his tracks. Deflated, he slowly turned around and walked back to the door to the basement. Driscoll had already opened it, then taken a couple of steps back, remaining out of his reach.

  Halfway down the basement stairs, he stopped when he saw Rees Colback and a balding man standing by a metal chair that had been brought in from the garden. Sitting on a box to the side was Farooq Naser.

  “Keep going,” Driscoll said.

  West turned sideways on the step. “So you can torture me? I don’t think—”

  A round from Driscoll’s suppressed Glock slammed into the side of his knee, sending him tumbling down the remaining stairs. When he hit the bottom, Colback and the other man took an arm each and dragged him to the chair. He could only offer token resistance as they used rolls of duct tape to secure his wrists and ankles to the furniture. West screamed as they bent his injured leg into place.

  Driscoll descended and rifled through his pockets. She found his phone.

  “What’s the PIN?”

  The initial shock of being shot was wearing off, and waves of pain began to wash over him.

  “The PIN,” she asked again.

  When he didn’t answer, Driscoll pressed her thumb into the wound.

  West screamed in blinding agony until she stepped back.

  “I can keep this up all night, or we can try waterboarding, if you prefer.”

  West flinched and, too late, realized that his involuntary response would be his undoing. He’d experienced that method of interrogation during training many years earlier. It had lasted just a few seconds, the purpose being to show him how effective it was. The fear and panic he’d felt all those years ago came flooding back, compounding the pain in his leg.

  “Four-nine-one-eight,” he said through clenched teeth.

  Driscoll entered the number into the handset and began scrolling through his call logs. “Who’s your contact at the ESO?”

  West was about to argue that he would be a dead man if he gave her that information, but it dawned on him that there was no way he was leaving the basement alive. The two strangers with Driscoll hadn’t tried to cover their faces to hide their identities, so Driscoll was hardly likely to allow him to go once the interrogation was over.

  If there was the slightest chance he could extricate himself from this predicament he would have fought for his life, but facing four armed opponents while restrained was never a winning position. The remainder of his life would be spent waiting for Driscoll to deliver the fatal shot.

  “I don’t know his name,” West said truthfully. “I’m too far down the pecking order to be given that information.”

  Driscoll’s expression said she believed him.

  “Tell me where your computer is. You must be able to log into the network from home.”

  “First, tell me where my wife is.”

  “Upstairs,” Driscoll told him. “Once we’re clear of the area, we’ll call the police and they can untie her.”

  “And me?”

  Driscoll raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? You sent your men to kill Rees, then me. You’re also responsible for my brother’s death. The best you can hope for is a clean, quick kill, and you know it. Now, where’s the computer?”

  West’s head dropped. Believing the end was coming and having it confirmed were two different things. Suddenly, he no longer felt prepared for it.

  He could try to hold out long enough for his team to become worried and send someone to investigate his disappearance, but that could be hours away. He’d already told them he’d be back early in the morning, giving Driscoll half a day to inflict pain.

  And she would. Her record spoke for itself, and her personnel file made for scary reading. Spending twelve hours trying to defy her didn’t even warrant consideration.

  “Rees, go upstairs and get a bucket of water and a towel.”

  “No!” West’s head snapped up. “There’s a laptop in my briefcase by the front door.”

  Driscoll nodded to Colback, who ran up the stairs and returned moments later with the leather case. He took out the laptop and handed it to Naser.

  “Password?”

  West gave Naser an eleven-character code. Before inputting it, Naser looked to Driscoll.

  “If that’s the duress code that sends an alert and wipes the hard drive, you know what I’ll do to you.”

  West had hoped she didn’t know about that security measure. He’d been prepared to claim that Naser must have entered the incorrect password, shutting down the operating system. Unfortunately, they’d both known better.

  West sighed, and gave Naser the real password.

  “What’s the password to get into the system?” Driscoll asked.

  West told her, and moments later Naser gave her a thumbs-up. She read out a phone number from West’s cell, and Naser tapped at the keyboard.

  “No registered owner. I’ll see if I can get a location.”

  “Why?” Driscoll asked West. “Why kill my brother and Bukowitz, and why go after Rees?”

  West stared back at her. “Orders.”

  “I remember a group of people used that excuse about seventy years ago. Didn’t work out too well for them. Your superiors didn’t give you a reason?”

  “You know that’s not how things work. We’re given instructions and we carry them out, bigger picture be damned. You of all people should understand that.”

  “So you don’t know that this was all to silence those who knew about Hank Monroe’s involvement in CIA drug running?”

  “Who the hell’s Hank Monroe?”

  “He’s the governor of Nebraska,” Driscoll said.

  “No wonder I’ve never heard of him.”

  “Few outside his state have, but the ESO has him penciled in as the next president. His drug-related activities in Afghanistan were the only blemish on an impeccable record, and if his name hadn’t been mentioned in the Adrian Holmes piece, it probably never would’ve come to light.”

  “Then blame Elphick and Holmes for this mess. I was just doing my job.”

  “I’ve located the phone,” Naser interrupted. “It’s at a house on Greenbank Road, off I-66, around forty miles west of D.C. Just bringing up the details . . . It’s called Gray Rock and is owned by a corporation based in Nassau. They paid twenty-six million dollars for it six years ago. Twelve bedrooms, eleven bathrooms, thirty thousand square feet.”

  “Find out who owns the business,” Driscoll instructed him, “and get schematics, security details, everything you can.”

  “I’ll bet you anything it’s linked to Henry Langton,” Naser said as he worked feverishly.

  “That’s f
ar too obvious,” said Driscoll.

  “Who’s Henry Langton?” the blond man asked.

  “He’s the head of the richest family on the planet,” Naser told him, “though it’s run more like a business, with him as the CEO. He controls every central bank in the world, except three, and he’s the real power behind the governments of the world. He was the architect of the financial crash back in 2008, and the austerity measures we’re seeing around the globe are his way of pushing his privatization agenda. If a country needs a bailout—Greece being a prime example—it’s Langton who decides how much they get, what it can be used for, and what it’ll cost. In the case of Greece, national assets such as airports, ports, railways, and waterworks have been earmarked for sale to German business interests under Langton’s control, and once he’s squeezed the country for everything he can, he’ll move on to the next one.”

  “It’s all conspiracy theory nonsense,” Driscoll reiterated.

  “Why doesn’t anyone stop him?” the blond guy asked, ignoring Eva’s comment.

  “Because he’s untouchable,” West interjected. “The law can’t touch you when you make the laws. You, me, we’re just pawns in their game. You kill me, they’ll just send someone else to take you down.”

  “You also think Langton’s behind all this?” Driscoll asked.

  West shrugged. “Who else? You need unlimited funds to control a government and get it to kill its own citizens. Langton has hundreds of billions, maybe trillions. More than enough to make anyone abandon their morals.”

  “The current president doesn’t seem to be dancing to their tune,” Colback said.

  “A temporary setback. Anything that’s hurt them will have gone through as an executive order, and those’ll be undone by Monroe when he wins the next election. The people will see democracy in action for a couple more years and their faith in the system will be restored, but come the next election, it’ll be business as usual.”

  “Bingo!” Naser exclaimed. “I was right about the Langtons, but the house is occupied by Edward, the oldest son. I’ve downloaded the layout to a flash drive and I’m searching for security measures.”

  “If you’re thinking of storming the place, you’re crazy,” West said. “He’s bound to have the latest in security, and a small army to back up the technology. You might as well just shoot yourself in the head now and get it over with.”

  “He could be right,” Naser sighed. “The corporation recently paid nineteen million dollars to Armcorp International, a security firm in Washington. No details about what they purchased, but when you spend almost as much on guarding a house as you do purchasing it, I’m guessing it’s state of the art.”

  “See if you can—”

  West’s phone chirped in Driscoll’s hand, indicating an incoming call.

  “If I don’t answer that, the protocol is to trace the cell and send a team to look for me.”

  Driscoll stared at West for a few seconds, then raised her weapon and pointed it at his forehead. “One wrong word and your wife dies too.”

  Driscoll pressed the Connect button, put it on speaker, and held the phone closer to West.

  “West.”

  Pearson began giving him updates received from Eagle Two, but West could scarcely focus on the words his underling was saying. Despite Driscoll’s threat, he knew his wife would already be dead. He’d have done the same thing.

  All that remained to resolve was his own demise. If he played along with her, she might finish by exacting revenge for her brother’s death, and that would mean an agonizing final few hours. Better to get it over with.

  Anton West swallowed, then closed his eyes.

  “Driscoll’s here—”

  CHAPTER 35

  Henry Langton stormed past the Calico Club employee waiting to take his coat and burst through the door to the meeting room. He shucked off his Burberry and threw it over the back of a chair, then stood facing the screen that had been set up on the table, ignoring the others in the room.

  Attending these meetings by video call was highly irregular. The technical wizard who’d set up the link for his son had insisted it was impossible to intercept, but Langton paid little heed to such assurances.

  Death was the only guarantee worth a damn.

  At his insistence, the face on the screen was pixelated and the voice scrubbed through various filters to make a match impossible.

  “You’d better have made progress since you called me this morning.” Henry Langton’s tone matched his mood: dark and vengeful.

  “As I said, we sent the nearest team to check his house, but West was already dead and Driscoll was long gone. West’s wife was found upstairs, trussed up in a linen closet. She’s hysterical, but we’ve got someone taking care of her.”

  “I don’t give a damn about his bitch. What did he tell them?”

  “I’ve had the cyber-crime unit working to identify everything he accessed before his death. He was tied to a chair when she killed him, and his laptop was still logged into the network. It looks like he was tortured for the password.”

  Langton gripped the back of the leather chair in front of him. “What were they looking for?”

  Edward Langton swallowed. “Us,” he said. “They managed to trace my phone to Gray Rock. They downloaded the blueprints and discovered an invoice from Armcorp. I think they’re planning to come after us.”

  “After you, you mean.”

  Though he’d nurtured the boy for more than four decades, Henry Langton often wondered if there’d been a mix-up at birth. His son should have wrapped this up a long time ago, but his incompetence was on a par with West’s. Still, it had created an opportunity to end things once and for all.

  “Obviously, I’ll move out of Gray Rock until she’s been dealt with,” Edward said.

  “You’ll do no such thing,” said Langton with heat. “We’ve spent days chasing her all over the country. It’s time to let her come to us. I want you to stay in the house and act as if nothing’s changed. If she suspects we know her plan, she’ll crawl back into the woodwork.”

  “But what if she attacks?”

  Henry could smell his son’s fear—even over the video link—and his contempt for his heir threatened to overwhelm him.

  “Oh, she will. I’m counting on it. And we’ll be ready for her.”

  Henry poured himself a coffee and took his seat at the head of the two-hundred-year-old oak table. He lit a cigarette and blew a cloud toward the ceiling.

  “What exactly are the current security arrangements at Gray Rock?”

  “We’ve got twenty men rotating on eight-hour shifts, seven days a week. Never fewer than twelve on duty on a given day. Another eight men are on standby to cover holidays and absence.”

  “So, in any eight-hour period, you’ve got only four men on duty?”

  Edward nodded. “It’s all we’ve ever needed. Most of the time they deal with passers-by looking to get close enough to take photographs of the house. There’s never been a serious threat.”

  “Until now,” his father said. “What about early-warning systems?”

  “Motion sensors around the perimeter, backed up by CCTV. All of them are virtually impossible to detect unless you know where to look.”

  “Let’s assume she does. What else have you got?”

  “That’s it,” Edward said.

  It might have been enough to keep out tourists and the curious, but Driscoll and her team—which had recently increased by two—would have little trouble getting in.

  And Henry Langton intended to let her do exactly that.

  Farooq Naser was a noncombatant, but the two newcomers would have been brought in for precisely this kind of mission. Even if Naser took part in the assault, it would be five against . . . well, as many as he wanted.

  He took out his phone and looked through the contacts for the CEO of Stormont International. Various hedge funds controlled by Langton owned 90 percent of the shares in the company, and the CEO was paid a m
illion dollars a year more than he was worth. The extra compensation was to ensure compliance in situations such as this. Langton had only ever had reason to call the man once before, and that had been to order him to allow Libyan rebels access to one of Stormont’s clients in the region. The bodyguards had dutifully stood back when the client had been ambushed and kidnapped, and as a result one of Langton’s oil companies had managed to secure a twenty-billion-dollar contract weeks later.

  “It’s me,” he said, aware that the software in his custom-made phone was scrambling the voice to make it unrecognizable. To the recipient, he sounded like a vinyl single played at forty RPM instead of forty-five, with all inflection removed, creating a monotone delivery.

  “Yes, sir. What can I do for you?”

  “I want a hundred of your best men and I need them in the next six hours.”

  “That’s no problem. What’s the mission?”

  “I’ll send someone to give you that information in a couple of hours. I’ll need them for two weeks. Have an invoice ready when my man arrives.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And when I say your best men, I don’t just mean those who are available. Pull people off other assignments if you have to.”

  “Understood.”

  Langton ended the call.

  “Driscoll killed West about twelve hours ago, so my guess is she’s already in the area,” he thought aloud. “How do we get a hundred men into Gray Rock without her noticing?”

  “We have regular food deliveries,” Edward said. “We could cram them into the back of the truck.”

  “Not only a hundred men,” Langton said. “They’ll also need weapons and other equipment.”

  “We could bring them in separately, in a cable van or something like that. Plus, it’s almost time to rotate the guards, so we could send in a bus but have most of them lying on the floor, with just eight men visible. We can send eight men out again, so it doesn’t look like we’re beefing up security.”

  Finally beginning to use your brain, huh? Now that your ass is on the line.