During that short drive, what little sense and reason that remained in Bradley Riker had left him. His only thought was revenge against the man who had brought so much pain and suffering to his daughter. He already knew Rohrs lived alone, having divorced his third wife over a year ago.
Riker parked across the street from the house and waited – a wait that lasted until nearly three in the morning. Finally, a large, blue, late model four door sedan careened into the driveway, its right tire running over the curb as the car lurched to stop in front of the two garage doors.
Rohrs stumbled out of the car and then fell to the ground, laughing to himself as he rolled onto his back. When the political adviser opened his eyes, he saw Bradley Riker staring back down at him.
“What is it? What do you want?”
Riker glared at Rohrs, noting the alcohol fed paunch, bloodshot eyes, and ample double chin that quivered as Rohrs attempted to lift himself off of the ground.
“You need to get off my property asshole, or you can help me up. Either one, take your pick.”
Rohrs had half rolled onto his side, but then fell back down again. Riker was amazed the man had managed to drive his car this far given the extent of his inebriation.
Just like he was driving it the day he hit Daniela.
The reminder was too much, tearing apart the last vestiges of self control. Riker’s right foot slammed into Rohrs’ side, sending the older man gasping for breath as he scrambled across the driveway and toward the entrance to his home.
The second kick caused Rohrs to begin vomiting, the vast quantities of alcoholic liquid projecting from his mouth in a grotesque, cartoonish fashion as he continued to work his way toward the front door.
“You want money? I got it inside the house. Just don’t kick me anymore, ok? Just…I got it inside the house.”
Riker had grabbed Rohrs by the back of his collar and pulled, pushed, and dragged him to the front door.
“Open it.”
Rohrs, whose reply came between a series of gasping gurgles, pointed toward the door handle.
“It’s not locked. You can go right in, ok? Take whatever you want. There’s not much.”
That was when Riker saw the left corner of the car’s bumper gleaming softly under the motion sensor driveway lamp. A small area of metallic red contrasted with the vehicle’s dark blue, the very same red of Daniela’s tricycle.
A pained sigh was the only sound Bradley Riker made before he grabbed onto Rohrs and shoved him into the front door.
“Get in there you drunken prick.”
Rohrs opened the door with a trembling hand, his chest heaving as he struggled to catch his breath.
“Calm down buddy, just…take it easy, ok?”
Riker pushed Rohrs in the back after closing the front door behind him, sending the middle aged political adviser sprawling onto the hard wood hallway that led from the small foyer entrance.
Rohrs rolled onto his side, his panicked eyes looking back at Riker, already sensing this had something more to do than just a mere robbery.
“Please, whatever this is about, let’s talk it over, ok? Let’s just sit down and…talk it over.”
The words were spoken in a whistling, wheezing type gasp as Rohrs continued to struggle for oxygen. Riker noted the man’s skin had gone pale, and his face was covered in a heavy layer of sweat.
“You almost killed my little girl. Some days, when I look at what is left of her, I wish you did. Ran her over with your car and left her dying on the pavement. Hit her with the same car you have parked outside. Who’d you get to end the investigation? The senator you work for? Some influential political donor? Doesn’t matter, because it’s just you and me now asshole. Just you and me…”
Rohrs looked like he was about to deny the allegation, but then seeing the rage burning within Bradley Riker’s eyes, thought better of it. Instead he began sobbing as he sat on the hallway floor with his back leaning against the wall.
“I’m so sorry. I’m a sick man. I need help. I can’t stop, I can’t---“
Riker was in no mood for the pathetic bastard’s bullshit.
“How about you just call a damn cab? You don’t need to drive! Why do it? Why put so many other people in danger? Why run over a child, and then just drive off?”
The final words were shouted out by the NSA agent as his balled up right fist descended into the right side of Rohrs’ face, the knuckled bone crunching into the political adviser’s overly fleshy cheek. Again and again Riker struck the older man, for how long he couldn’t later recall. All he knew is that each blow represented just a fragment of the pain Cylis Rohrs had inflicted upon the Riker family. Finally the punches stopped as Bradley Riker stepped away from Rohrs’ battered and bleeding face.
The older man was barely moving, his breath now faint whisper, his eyes half open slits, glazed and unfocused.
Cylis Rohrs was already all but dead at that point, having suffered a massive heart attack that had begun shortly looking up at Bradley Riker looming over him outside his home.
Initially, Riker considered calling 911, but stopped when he realized he would most certainly be charged with Rohrs’ death. It was Riker’s NSA job which afforded them the kind of insurance coverage that provided Daniela the very best care. That care would go away if Riker were to end up in jail, leaving his wife and Daniela alone without the means to give his daughter the specialist treatment her condition required.
Call Ray Tilley. He’ll know what to do.
Which is exactly what Riker did, closing in his eyes in gratitude when Tilley answered on the second ring. Riker explained the situation in thirty seconds, and then waited for Tilley’s response, praying silently that his old college buddy wouldn’t simply leave him on his own.
“Stay put, keep the lights turned off, and I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Don’t go outside. Don’t do anything until I arrive. I’ll be coming in from the back of the house, so make sure it’s unlocked.”
Tilley walked into the home through the back door in seventeen minutes. He said nothing as he looked around first at the body of the by then dead, Cylis Rohrs, and then the rest of the home, before finally addressing Riker.
“Your car is across the street, right?”
Riker nodded once.
“Good, I want you to go out the back, make your way to your car avoiding the street lights, and then drive home. Go straight home, understand? No stops. Go home, and then start work tomorrow just like you would any other day. Tell nobody about what happened here tonight, not even your wife. That hand there, you need to clean it up and then wrap it so it’s covered up, and tell anyone who might ask, that you fell down and sprained it. Don’t change that story. Just repeat it to whoever asks you. So leave here, go home, and I’ll handle the rest. As far as you’re concerned, this – whatever this was, it never happened, understand?”
Again Riker nodded just once, and then walked out the back of the home as Tilley had instructed him to.
Two days later he read the headline and brief accompanying story in one of the local D.C. newspapers regarding the death of Cylis Rohrs.
Cylis Rohrs, 59, was found dead in his home late yesterday morning by D.C. Metro police, the victim of an apparent car jacking and subsequent heart attack. The initial investigation, according to Metro P.D. spokeswoman Leah Brown, indicates Mr. Rohrs was left in an unknown location following the carjacking, walked back to his residence where he then collapsed inside his home. He had apparently been in poor health for some time.
Rorhs was a well known fixture among political circles in Washington D.C., having spent the last fourteen years as a senior consultant for Minnesota Senator Delvin Briggs.
Senator Briggs’s office issued a statement calling Cylis Rohrs a “wonderful friend and great asset to our staff. He will be missed.”
It was nearly a month after that announcement when Bradley Riker received a noon phone call from Ray Tilley, asking to meet him in the park two blocks down from Riker’s
apartment.
It was in the park, surrounded by various people jogging, reading, and walking their dogs, where Tilley indicated he expected the work performed on Riker’s behalf regarding Cylis Rohrs be paid back at a time of Tilley’s choosing.
“Some day I’ll call in the favor, Bradley, and I need to know you can be trusted to pay up when that time comes.”
Riker glanced toward an attractive woman as she jogged past where he and Tilley were standing, and then shrugged.
“Sure, you can count on me, Ray, no problem.”
Ray Tilley held Riker’s gaze for a moment and then shook his head.
“I’m not talking about a quick data reference Bradley, or a file that I can eventually get to myself. When I call in the favor, it’s gonna be something big, something that puts your career, possibly even your life, at risk.”
This caused Riker to pause as he wondered what Tilley might be involved in. He knew it was military related, though whatever it was, not even Riker’s NSA clearances could pull it up, meaning it was totally off the books.
“You can trust me, Ray, but I need to know one thing.”
Ray Tilley’s eyebrows rose slightly as he stood with both hands stuffed into his coat pockets.
“What’s that?”
“Are you one of the good guys?”
It was actually a question Tilley had often asked of himself. He looked out at the surrounding park, and the people who were able to carry on in considerable security having been blessed to live in a country where such security was an expectation rarely interfered with because of men like him, who worked to make it so.
“Yeah, Bradley, I’m one of the good guys.”
15.
“Danika, I need you to look at me and listen very carefully to what I tell you, ok?”
Mac Walker knew the flight attendant was near her breaking point. He also knew that if they were to have a chance to get out of this alive, she would play an integral part in helping to make that happen.
“You’re going to go back out there and act as if nothing is wrong. You tell the air marshal you checked on Walter and me in the bathroom, and we’re tied up and secure, just like he left us, right?”
Danika’s confused expression caused Stasia to curse under her breath.
“You can’t be serious, Mr. Walker. You trust her?”
Mac leaned back and stared at Danika for a moment and then nodded his head.
“Yeah, and besides, we don’t have much of a choice. She may be part of this mess, but I think she’s having second thoughts. Maybe she’s worried she’ll never see her own family or friends alive again. Am I right Danika?”
Danika’s eyes welled up once again with tears as she fought to look at least partly composed under the stress of the situation she unwisely had placed herself in.
“I can help you. I will help you. I don’t want anyone else getting hurt. The passengers, I was told they wouldn’t be harmed. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”
Mac nodded his head, appearing to Danika every bit the comforting, reasonable counterpart to Stasia’s simmering rage and distrust.
“Very good, Danika. So walk out there and do what I said, and when the time comes, help us to help keep the passengers safe. Can I trust you to do that for me?”
Danika nodded as Mac helped her back to her feet while the tone of the 767’s engines lowered considerably as the plane prepared to land.
With Danika gone from the cargo area, both Stasia and Walter stood staring at Mac in disbelief.
“What? I need to get into the cockpit, and to do that, we need more time to prepare. She’ll buy us that time.”
Stasia rolled her eyes and pointed at the door from which Danika had just departed.
“Or she sends that air marshal in here shooting.”
Mac Walker merely shrugged.
“Then I deal with that if I have to. Otherwise, we wait for our moment and take it when it presents itself.”
“Mr. Walker, I don’t take unnecessary risk.”
The former Navy SEAL grinned as he leaned down to whisper into Stasia’s left ear.
“After you and me are done saving the world, we’ll see about that.”
Walter moved himself against the wall of the cargo hold and motioned for the others to do the same.
“Better hold on – we’re about to land.”
True to Walter’s warning the 767’s landing gear cried out several times as the wheels made contact with the ground, the force of the landing almost succeeding in knocking Mac, Stasia, and Walter off of their feet.
While Mac and the others were bouncing around the cargo area, the cockpit of the 767 was home to two very determined men. Reyos Huskich, the armed air marshal, was occupying the seat of the recently killed co-pilot, whose body had been crammed into the back right corner of the cramped space.
Flight 444’s captain was a nearly twenty year commercial pilot veteran by the name of David Rogers. The name he had been born with though, was David Kurjak, the son of a Bosnian family who had been slain during the 1990’s conflict that tore through his homeland. Kurjak had long left Bosnia by the time his family was murdered, having attended university in London, then moving to the United States to pursue a career in flying.
The war changed him though, just as he changed his surname from Kurjak to the more Americanized Rogers in 1996. It was then the seeds of his plan were initially planted, the desire for revenge having completely consumed his being until that revenge was the only thing left to him. David Kurjak watched and waited, and eventually found others who believed as he did, that the tens of thousands who suffered during the bloodshed and rampant inhumanities of the Bosnian Conflict must be made to pay for their sins, and there was no greater devil than the corruption housed within the confines of Satan’s Church – the Vatican.
Allah demanded it so.
“Everything looks to be in order. It appears our Tunisian contacts have followed through with their promises.”
Captain Kurjak glanced at the air marshal, and then nodded approvingly while expertly bringing the 767 to a stop on the narrow, compacted dirt air strip before turning its nose toward a large, metallic hanger with a green painted roof that made the structure more difficult to be spotted by overhead satellites.
“I told you they could be trusted. They feel as we do, all of us disciples of Torgal Al-Muhamed. So it was written, and so it will be done.”
Reyos Huskich watched from the co-pilot’s chair while a group of armed men emerged from the darkness of the nearby hangar as a thin smile crept out from underneath his considerable mustache, and then repeated the words of Captain Kurjak.
“So it was written, and so it will be done. All praise to Allah.”
16.
“I need everything you can come up with on the missing plane out of Paris – Atlantis Flight 444. Any names, back stories, connections that seem odd, out of place, and pay particular attention to the flight crew.
“I also need you to run a full report on a Stasia Wellington. I’m told she’s connected to Vatican Intelligence. I already know the basic information, so I’m counting on you to dig deeper, understand? Get me what they don’t want me to know.”
Riker looked at Tilley as the two men sat in the limo’s backseat while the vehicle made its way slowly amidst the mid day D.C. traffic.
“Was she on the plane - Stasia Wellington?”
Tilley nodded while watching a motorcycle rider speed past them, weaving between cars on its way to some apparently urgent destination.
“I was told she was. I’m hoping you can confirm it.”
Tilley sensed Riker becoming increasingly interested in the task. The missing plane had dominated the news that morning.
“Do you think the plane didn’t actually crash in the ocean, despite the debris field that’s being reported?”
Ray Tilley wasn’t immediately certain how to respond, so finally, he decided to simply respond with the truth.
“I think tha
t plane was hijacked. I think it’s out there right now, somewhere, and whoever took it, doesn’t intend to just give it back. The people I deal with aren’t willing to disclose what they know, at least not to me. So, that’s where you come in Bradley. I need you to tell me what they won’t. Even better would be for you to give me information they don’t yet know.”
Riker looked ahead toward the limo driver, wanting to confirm the glass partition that separated the back of the limo from the front, remained closed, before whispering his next question to Tilley.
“I do this, and we’re square, right? This is the big favor you said you’d be calling in after…”
Riker’s voice trailed off, not wanting to actually speak directly of the Cylis Rohrs incident.
Tilley’s mouth widened slightly into a thin smile as he nodded.
“Yeah, I’ll consider the debt paid, but I need this fast, within the next few hours.”
Riker’s eyes widened as his mouth dropped open, shocked at the abbreviated time frame Tilley wanted him to work under.
“Ray, that’s impossible! I have to work around protocols, hide my tracks, maybe call in my own favors to a few other---“
Tilley cut him off.
“You can do it, Bradley. Don’t give me excuses, give me information. That’s how this works. You do this, and you don’t owe me for what I did for you.”
Riker persisted in his belief what Tilley was asking of him was impossible.
“It’s not enough time. I’ll be caught, and then what good will that be for you and any future information you’d like to have access to?”
Ray Tilley had enough of Riker’s hesitation, and turned to face him, jabbing a finger sharply into the other man’s chest.
“Don’t lecture me on worries about getting caught, Bradley. I could have got caught when I took care of that Rohrs mess for you. Yeah, I know you don’t like to hear his name, but it happened, ok? You got scared, I came in and took care of all of it for you, didn’t I? I did it because I consider you a friend, and I know that guy was the one who hurt your family. And then you gave me your word that when I asked for a favor, you’d agree to do it. So here we are, and you can either be a man of your word, or just another sniveling little NSA asshole who wants to give me excuses about needing more time. You don’t need more time, you just need to grow a pair and give me what I’m asking for, and you’re going to do it today.”
Military Fiction: THE MAC WALKER COLLECTION: A special ops military fiction collection... Page 7