by Davis Bunn
“You’ll get soaked.”
She gave him a cop’s look. Then it was gone. Replaced by that same disconcerting calm. “Let’s go do this.”
The city park area was split by the Vietnam Memorial Bridge. North was the Middle Branch Park with its marina and rowing club. South was Cherry Hill Park. Between the two, jammed up tight against the point where the bridge left the water and met land, was the Vietnam Memorial.
They crossed the rail lines and took the trail that ran by the Patapsco River estuary. Up ahead the Hanover Highway traffic sliced high streamers and hit the bridge link with regular bass thunks. The rain cleared momentarily, long enough for Connie to spot the POW-MIA flag streaming black and wet upon the high ridge. “Of course.”
They found the Grand Marquis at the entrance to the memorial’s small parking lot. The exit ramp swung down at a very steep angle from the point where bridge met land. A tall central hedge masked the curve. The road had a pair of speed bumps just before the parking lot entrance. Pecard’s old clunker stood by the second speed bump. Three of the tires were off the road. The car had crashed into a poplar. The side window and front windshield were totally shattered. Glass littered the bushes, the car hood, the wet empty seat. The driver’s headrest was stained with something dark.
Connie said, “Windscreens don’t shatter like this from gunfire.”
Matt spotted the metal protruding from beneath the bushes. He picked up an aluminum bat. “Call for backup.”
Connie reached for her phone, then realized he was moving on. “We need to wait.”
“My father is up there.” He dropped the bat and kept going. “Aim for the flag.”
The first rule of engagement they taught at FLETSE was two words. The instructors all said it over and over, drilling it into the thickest skull: Speed kills.
Matt did everything by the book. He avoided a clear view of the ridge. He crossed the parking lot moving from cover to cover. He crouched at the base of the hill and waited through a clear moment, watching the three flags rattle the tall metal poles.
Rainsqualls snaked across the water, gray pillars that came with a soft rushing sound. When the next one dumped its drenching chill, Matt snaked uphill on his belly.
Even so, when he was about two-thirds of the way up, a shot from nowhere plowed a muddy ditch about ten inches from his face. He rolled back, pawing the dirt from his eyes.
A voice called from somewhere overhead, “Time to rise and shine, Kelly!”
Matt scrambled into the rain ditch that ran alongside the walkway. He had no idea if he was out of the shooter’s line of sight. The rushing water sluiced the mud and grit from his eyes.
The pavement sparked to his left. Whatever sound the silenced rifle made was carried away in the wind and the rain. “You don’t listen so good, do you, boy!”
The shooter had to be positioned on a bridge stanchion. Matt spiraled over so that he lay on his back in the frigid stream. He strained his neck and squinted against the flow. The bridge traffic thundered past. But he saw nothing. If he could not see, then neither could the shooter.
The voice shouted, “Paul! Tell the boy to get on up!”
“Don’t do it, son! Get out of here!”
Something whanged on metal, a hard clanging that caused his father to cry out in either fear or pain. The shooter yelled, “You do what I say! The both of you!”
Matt stayed where he was. The next squall approached with the hiss of a million water snakes. Just as it hit land, he sprang.
A bullet whipped the sidewalk. Matt jinked slightly to his left, like he was aiming back downhill. But the sidewalk gave him purchase, enough to switch around and accelerate at the same time. He sprinted straight uphill, leaped over the ring’s outer border of shrubs, tumbled, crawled, and halted by the stone wall that rimmed the memorial.
A bullet chipped off the stone by his head. Matt hugged the knee-high wall and scrambled to his left. It was a largely futile move. A trained sniper would sweep his scope back and forth along the wall, finger on the trigger, ready to blast away at the first sign. Especially now that the squall was passing.
The sibilant rush of sound gradually softened to pattering drops off the trees between the flagpoles. Matt hissed out, “Pop!”
The shooter yelled, “Don’t call him that!”
Paul Kelly sounded hollow. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“Tell me your status.”
“What for? It’ll only get you killed too.”
Another voice came in. Low and slightly slurred. “We’re roped to the MIA flagpole.”
“Pecard.”
“Three claymores are wired around the base. He’s fused—”
The shooter yelled out, “This is your last chance to come clean, Kelly! Tell the boy who you really are!”
“You’re insane.”
The shooter cackled. “No argument there. Losing your woman, watching her steal your boy. Learning she’s given him to a scum who’d shoot his own man in the back. Yeah, that’d drive you insane.”
“I never shot—” Paul Kelly’s voice broke off as the flagpole clanked again. He moaned.
“Tell him!” The voice sounded slightly nearer, but it was hard to tell with the shifting wind. “Tell him how Megan wouldn’t even let me have the boy tested to see if he was mine! She promised she’d call the cops if I even showed up at your door!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
Matt gripped the stone with both hands, took two tight breaths, and pitched his voice into a high familiar shrill. His mother’s voice. The one she used when irate enough for her raw beginnings to emerge. “Porter Reeves! You stop that and behave!”
The only sound was the thumping rush of traffic on the bridge.
Matt knew he was too tense and too breathless to give his best. But the words came easy enough, drawn from his mother’s stock phrases. “Haven’t you learned anything in all these years?”
The response was fainter now. “Megan?”
“Why did you hurt me so? What did I ever give you but my best?”
“You left me! You married him!” The voice rose so high it broke and shattered. “You wouldn’t let me claim my boy!”
“He isn’t yours!” Matt heard the next soft rush of rain, pushed off the wall far enough to see the incoming veil. “Now you come down here so I can talk to you. Right this instant!”
The hardest downpour of the day hit then. Matt rolled over the wall and sprinted across the inner circle to where the flagpoles rose at its center. Expecting at any moment to be torn apart by incoming fire.
The two men were roped back-to-back. Claymores were positioned under both of them. Paul Kelly watched his approach in horrified disbelief. “That was you?”
Pecard’s hair was parted by a slice that ran pink in the rain. His face was slack, his eyes unfocused. Matt examined the knots, hissed, “Knife.”
Pecard had to form his tongue carefully around each word. “Rear pocket.”
Matt dug it out and clawed at the clasp. He forced his fingers to unlock and pried out a blade. Went to work on the top rope. Pecard slipped off the pole, gasped with the release of pressure from his lungs. He began crawling away on his elbows. Matt sawed at the next rope.
There was a soft metallic click. And the feel of something colder and harder than the rain on his neck. “You think you’re the only one who can use rain for cover, boy?”
Porter Reeves was an inch or so shorter than Matt. He had the same hyper-leanness of Allen Pecard, the same ornery tautness to his features. Only with Porter everything was magnified to an impossible degree. Impossible for a man to have a face like a stone ridge, where his eyes peered like furious beasts from two caves. Impossible to have a frame that powerful, emanating that much energy, and be so pale. Cadaverous. Even his mouth looked emaciated, just a slit in the bottom half of his face. “You’re not half-bad, kid.”
Porter Reeves held a military-issue forty-five in one hand and an electro
nic trigger in his other. He motioned with his pistol. “Slide on over here. Keep both hands where I can see them. Don’t want you getting maimed with old Dad here.”
He spiked that last word with a kick to Paul Kelly’s side. “Go on. Tell him.”
When Matt tried to deflect a second kick, Porter Reeves cocked the pistol. “Do that again and I’ll take Kelly out real slow. Now move out of range.” He waited until Matt had crawled a ways off, then kicked Paul Kelly again. Watching Matt as he did so.
Paul Kelly grunted but made no other sound.
“Go on, tell him. Else I’ll cap that knee. Then you’ll tell him. Only louder.”
“Tell him what.” Even pale with bone-deep cold and drenched, Paul Kelly was still a handsome man. “That you were always crazy? That your antics risked the lives of all my men?”
The living skull leaned closer. “You triggered the mine that took me out, then you left me to die!”
“What are you talking about?”
Matt watched as Paul Kelly showed him the same open scorn he’d given his son. His son. All the years Matt had wondered why his father couldn’t just accept him for who he was. Stop racing from job to job, medal to medal in the business world. Slow down and let them be a family. It all came clear. That and more.
Paul Kelly said, “There was a firefight. You were on point. The mine went off. I saw you go down.”
“You saw? I was ten feet from that mine when it blew.” The cackle was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “You shot it off.”
“I should have shot you. I knew you were running some kind of scam. But I couldn’t prove it. All I did was call in the chopper. Sol went out to check for wounded. The chopper landed. We—”
“You left me for the Cong!”
“Listen to me! Sol checked you! My job was to save my men!”
Porter Reeves shouted so hard his neck corded from his shoulders to his ears. “I was one of your men!”
“It wasn’t him.” Matt was so cold, so detached, he could not claim the words as his own. Not until the two men stared at him. Matt said, “Pop didn’t fire the weapon.”
“I told you. Don’t call him that.” But the beast was back in the cave.
“Think for a second. Pop wasn’t involved in your scam, was he?” When Porter didn’t respond, Matt pressed. “If Pop had known, he’d have had you arrested, right? Not shot. He just said he was trying to get you taken off his roster.”
“I knew it.” Paul Kelly glared at his assailant. “The rumors from HQ were right. You conned those people.”
“Shut up, Kelly.” But Porter Reeves didn’t put any fire into it. “Go on, kid.”
“Pop sent Sol Greene to check for survivors. Sol checked you. He left you.”
Porter Reeves said, “But Sol was . . .”
“Your partner. I know.” And he did. Finally. “If anybody was going to fire a gun and set off a land mine, it would have been your partner in crime, right? The guy who was terrified you were going to get yourself arrested, and him too.”
Paul Kelly gaped in horror at his son. “Sol?”
Allen Pecard grunted from his spot by the stone ring. It could have been a laugh. Or a cough. His eyes were shut. But Matt was fairly certain he was listening.
“Sol Greene and Porter Reeves were partners in a scam with Barry Simms. They offered safe passage and fake American IDs to rich Vietnamese desperate to get out. They were making a fortune.” Matt pointed through the rain. “Pecard was investigating the scam. Porter took out Pecard’s partner. Porter was wild, spending money, sending up flares. Sol must have decided it was best to sacrifice one of their own.”
Porter Reeves opened his mouth, the effort of drawing breath turning each lungful into a tight scream. “Kelly . . .”
“Pop didn’t know a thing,” Matt said. Which wasn’t exactly true. His father had known about Megan and Porter. And never forgot. Or forgave. Either of them.
Two women and a man appeared by the perimeter wall. Spread out at forty-five-degree angles. Connie shouted, “Police! Drop your weapons! Now!”
Bannister swung over the wall, his gun staying trained on Reeves. Hannah Bernstein added her voice. “Step away from these men!”
Porter Reeves shut his eyes briefly. For an instant a world of weariness flooded his frame. A dark wave of poisonous regret. Then he opened his eyes and right hand at the same moment. Letting his pistol drop to the sodden earth.
“He’s got the trigger!” Matt scrambled up, preparing for attack. Knowing it was futile.
Porter Reeves turned slightly, looking at Matt. Then he stepped toward Paul Kelly.
Matt did the only thing he could to save his father. He leaped across the wet earth. Landed hard upon Paul Kelly. Gripped him tight. And shut his eyes against the blast to come.
“Get off him!”
A hand like a tree limb struck his neck. Matt only clung harder.
Then he heard three officers take Porter down. Still Matt held on, unable to accept that they had survived until Hannah Bernstein patted his shoulder and said, “It’s over.”
Lucas watched Hannah Bernstein work her phone. She had stopped by home to dry off and change into a gray pinstriped jacket with a high Nehru collar and a long row of gray cloth buttons. Matching skirt. Stockings. Lace-up shoes with a hint of heel, but still flat enough for real work. Which was what she had just returned from. Helping to bring a hardened criminal to justice. Talking with the press. Talking with the mayor’s office. Being reinstated. His boss again.
Only she wasn’t acting like a boss right now. She was pulling off her shoes. Setting them on the floor by his hospital bed. Smiling as she shut her phone. “This has been some day.”
“Make yourself at home, why don’t you.” But Lucas was smiling too. “Guess I’ll have to go back to being respectful again.”
“Absolutely. My new lieutenant is definitely charged with setting the proper example for our troops.” She was watching closely as she said it. “You’ll do it, won’t you. Take the job.”
“There’s the matter of the exam.”
She waved it aside. Absolutely of no importance. “Will you?”
He looked at her. Nobody would guess that this woman had just come back from duking it out with a killer. Her hair framed a strong yet open face, eyes as clear as the sky outside his window. Winter eyes. Full of icy fire. “It felt good backing up the rookies, giving them support, trusting them to do the frontline work.”
“Then you’ll do it?”
“Yes, Hannah. If that’s what you really want.”
“I want this. A lot.” She watched him ease up in bed, saw the wince. “You need something?”
“I’m okay. The therapist worked me over today, is all.” He leaned forward for her to punch his pillow into submission. “Thanks. I’ve been hit before; I ought to know the drill by now. Before the hit, I was strong and fast and pretty much invulnerable. After, I was just scared.”
He waited for her to say something like Shouldn’t you rest? or Is this really what we need to be talking about right now? Any number of things that all would have added up to deflection. But Hannah didn’t do that. Instead, she reached over and took his hand.
Lucas started to look down. But he stopped himself. He was afraid if he made a big deal of it she’d pull her hand away. And he liked it there. A lot. It felt like it belonged.
Hannah asked, “Is that when you became religious?”
“In a way. I thought I’d put the darkness behind me. I got on with life. I loved June so much. But I knew it was still there. The dark. I spent a long time in denial. You know?”
Hannah’s features showed the kind of sorrow that turned her old. She whispered, “Do I ever.”
“My faith is very important to me, Hannah.”
The words hung there in the air between them. She looked nice sitting there, holding his hand. Softer. She said, “I’ve never known anybody like you, Lucas. And I’ve known a lot of people.”
He saw the s
light hesitation over that last word and knew she had started to say men. Known a lot of men. “I understand.”
“I like the difference in you.” And just left it there. He saw her taste several unspoken thoughts, saw her give a minute shake of her head. And he understood that as well.
“How about going out on a date with me, Hannah?”
She didn’t draw her hand away, which was what he had been half-expecting. Instead she cocked her head to one side, letting the hair fall over her shoulder. And suddenly Lucas was looking back in years, to a much younger woman, one who was both shy and extremely appealing. “I’m your boss.”
He gripped her tighter. “Nobody’s perfect.”
The wind was still building as Matt parked in the alley behind his father’s house. Every surface was slick from the day’s drenching, but the rain had passed for now. The wind carried a thin blade of frost. Faint traces of wintry blue appeared overhead, there and gone as fast as the changing afternoon light. His father’s campaign bus glistened and mirrored the shifting season. The TV crews were gone, off chasing other sirens. The rain had shunted away the onlookers. The wind had erased the autumn colors. The street was empty and bare.
He stood by his car and waited as Bryan Bannister pulled in behind him, and then a second car of Bannister’s agents. Connie and Judy Leigh rose from the car. Matt walked back to where his father sat in Bannister’s rear seat. Paul Kelly was wrapped in an emergency blanket left by the ambulance that had taken Porter Reeves away. He rolled down his window and said, “I thought we were going to the hospital.”
“There’s something we need to take care of first,” Matt replied. “And I was going to get you some dry clothes. Unless you want to—”
“No.” His father glanced at the house, then turned away. “No.”
Matt did not insist. Pecard watched him with his unbandaged eye.
Bannister had wanted Pecard to take the ambo straight to Maryland General. Pecard had looked at Matt then the same way as now. Too ornery and British to plead. So Matt had asked for him, and Bannister had agreed to this one stop.