The Hunted

by Dave Zeltserman

  After she left, he had a refill on his coffee and drank it while he considered his options. As far as he could see he had three choices. Keep doing his job and collecting a paycheck, go on the run, or do what he could to stop them. He finished his coffee and accepted that he had only been kidding himself. He had no choice about what he was going to do next.

  Chapter 12

  Willis drove back to the shack he was renting so he could pick up Bowser, then drove back to his house. He stopped about a quarter mile away so he could let the dog out. The dog took off, running straight back to the house as if this was a game while Willis crept along behind him. If there was anyone hiding out there with a rifle, the dog would’ve smelled him out and gone after him. Still, Willis was careful to keep low as he made his way to his side door so he could let himself and Bowser back in.

  Once he was inside he packed up what he was going to need since he wasn’t going to be returning. Then he left a message for Barry. Twenty minutes later Barry called back and Willis told him they needed to talk.

  “I believe we’re talking now,” Barry said coldly.

  “Face to face,” Willis said. “You’re going to have to meet with me in person and explain to me how Melanie Hartman ended up being labeled an insurgent. I’m going to need to see the files and other documentation that led you to that decision.”

  Barry’s tone turned icier as he said, “I already explained to you what happened.”

  “Yeah, well, the problem is I don’t believe you.”

  “I see. And what do you think happened?”

  “Something very different.”

  Barry went silent for a long moment, then told Willis that what he was asking for was impossible.

  “It better not be. In an hour I’m going to call you from Boston. Someplace crowded where we can both be safe. When I call you I’ll give you the location and you’ll have fifteen minutes to show up. If you don’t I’ll be going to the press and I’ll be giving them everything, including copies I made of the dossiers and assignments from The Factory’s bulletin board—”

  “You were forbidden from making copies of that. You took an oath!”

  “Yeah, well, too bad. I’ll also be giving them a recording of all of our phone conversations, including this one.”

  Willis heard Barry exhaling his breath as if he were trying to calm himself down. Then in that same icy tone from earlier, Barry said, “You’re not going to get anywhere with what you’re doing.”

  “Possibly.”

  “It’s doubtful that the media will do anything with whatever you give them. Not with our reach and not with the current political environment.”

  “You could be right.”

  “The problem, Willis, is that you shouldn’t have lied during your psychological profile examination. If you had answered the questions truthfully, we wouldn’t be having this issue now.”

  Willis disconnected the call. It wasn’t worth arguing the matter.

  What he was going to do next was tricky. He was going to have to bring his Factory badge with him, and they’d be able to track his location with it. It was possible that they’d try to intercept him on his way to Boston. But even with that problem, Willis couldn’t help smiling over the way Barry screwed up. Willis had no idea where Barry was located. For all he knew, Barry could’ve been operating out of Nebraska. Or Texas. Or somewhere in Southeast Asia. Willis was hoping that Barry was located near the field agents he was supervising, and he had further guessed from the hours that Barry kept that he was on the east coast, but it had been only a guess. From the way Barry responded to Willis’s demand he all but confirmed that he was within an hour’s drive of the city. Otherwise he would have tried bargaining that he needed more time for them to meet, whether or not he had any intention of them meeting.

  Willis would have liked to have dropped Bowser off at the shack that he was renting, but he couldn’t do that since they’d be able to track him driving there. He considered abandoning the dog, but he couldn’t do that either. So he let Bowser in the backseat and gave him a thick rawhide bone to work on.

  Willis kept to the back roads and avoided any toll highways. Given the little time they had, it was more likely that they would track him to wherever he was going and deal with him there, but if they tracked him to a toll road, they could shut down the toll booths and trap him. With the route he took, he’d keep them off balance as to where he was heading, which was an area in South Boston where he knew it would be easy to park, and more importantly, an area where people tended to look the other way when things went down.

  As he expected, there was plenty of available street parking, but he parked illegally down an alley where his car wouldn’t be easily visible from the main street. Bowser looked up from his chewed-up bone and offered Willis a quizzical look. Willis got out and pointed a finger at the dog and ordered, “Stay here and be quiet.” Bowser grunted out his dissatisfaction over that, and then proceeded to demonstrate his unhappiness by tearing more vigorously at what was left of the bone. If Willis was able to come back later, he expected to see the backseat torn up also. That was okay. He wasn’t going to be keeping the car much longer.

  Willis cut through the alley, then down a side street and another alley so he could enter the coffee shop from a back entrance. He dropped his Factory badge in a corner of the shop and then kept moving until he was out a side door, keeping himself low and his face hidden. He kept walking until he was positioned in a doorway of a vacant storefront where he’d be able to watch the coffee shop but still be mostly concealed unless someone flashed a light into the doorway.

  It didn’t take long for his man to show up. No more than three minutes. The man was about his age, a few inches shorter, stockier, and with the hardness of a killer showing around his mouth and eyes. He wasn’t Barry, Willis was certain of that, but then again he still hadn’t made his call to Barry, and even if he had, he’d never expect Barry to show.

  The man who did show up moved cautiously as he consulted a device that must have been a GPS tracker. He kept close to the buildings so he wouldn’t be seen easily from the coffee shop, and he ended up passing within two feet of Willis without realizing it. As the man moved on, he kept consulting his GPS tracker. He stopped three doors away from the coffee shop and flattened himself in another building’s doorway. Willis texted Barry providing the coffee shop’s name and address, and telling Barry he had fifteen minutes to get there. Barry must’ve immediately texted the same information to his other man because Willis could hear the buzz of a phone that had been put on vibrate. He watched as the man took a cell phone from his jacket pocket and studied it as if he were reading a text message. The man put the cell phone away, then stepped out from the doorway and continued on. Before he entered the coffee shop he slipped his hand inside his jacket. Willis knew the man was keeping his fingers inches from a gun that he had holstered. He didn’t want to take it out yet, but he wanted quick access to it.

  Willis used a pair of field glasses to watch as the man moved quickly into the shop ready to start shooting if necessary. Most likely he would’ve used the gun to force Willis out of the shop so he could be taken care of someplace less public, but maybe not. Maybe the plan was to end things there and expect the witnesses to be too shocked to give the police an accurate identification of the shooter. Willis could see the man scanning the shop, his eyes narrowing and his mouth pinched. Indecision marred his expression for several heartbeats as he looked for Willis. He noticed the unisex bathroom in the corner of the shop and made his way over to it. When he tried the door handle he must’ve found it locked. A grimness tightened his mouth. He had to be figuring that Willis was hiding in there. Moving slowly to the counter he bought himself a coffee and then settled down to wait. He again reached inside his jacket as the door opened, then dejection contorted his face as a young woman stepped out of the bathroom. It was only then that the man spotted Willis’s Factory badge on the floor.

  He got up from his table, wal
ked to where the badge had been left and picked it up. After a quick look at it he brought it to the girl working behind the counter and showed it to her to see if she had seen the man in the photo. She shook her head. The man waved over the other kid working behind the counter. This kid looked at the badge and also shook his head.

  The man left the coffee shop after that. He moved cautiously, not quite sure what to do next. He stood for a moment making a face as if he were caught if the middle of a sneeze, then looked up and down the street searching for Willis. He must’ve decided that Willis got spooked and bailed on the meeting because his mouth tightened into an angry slash and he moved quickly then to go back to his car. His eyes were little more than dull black dots as he strode past the doorway where Willis was hiding, too sure that Willis was gone and too absorbed in his thoughts to bother looking anywhere but straight ahead.

  Like Willis, the man had ignored the available on-street parking and instead chose to park illegally on a side street so that it would’ve been less likely for his car to be spotted. The man moved with a single-minded purpose. When he reached his car, he used his remote to unlock it and reached for his cell phone, probably so he could call Barry. Up until then he hadn’t realized that Willis had been following him. It was only at the last second that he must’ve heard or sensed something because his body stiffened, but it was too late to help himself. Before he could react otherwise, Willis had a grip of his hair and banged his forehead twice against the car. The first blow dazed him, the second one mostly knocked him out. In a boxing ring he might’ve been able to remain standing on his feet, but he still would’ve been counted out by any competent referee. Willis yanked the man’s arm behind his back without any resistance, took possession of the car keys, and used masking tape that he had brought with him to secure the man’s wrists together. With one hand he grabbed the man by the scruff of the neck and dragged him to the back of the car, popped open the trunk and dumped the man inside of it. While the man lay groaning, Willis grabbed one of Bowser’s toys from his pocket—a small hard rubber ball, and he shoved it into the man’s mouth and taped it into place. He then wrapped masking tape around the man’s ankles securing them together. Before he closed the trunk, he searched through the man’s pockets and took his wallet, cell phone and gun.

  Willis drove to a warehouse several miles away that had been destroyed three years earlier in a fire. The building, while little more than a burnt-out shell, still stood. There was a vacant parking lot behind the building where they’d have some privacy. Some winos or drug addicts might be camped out there, but if they were Willis would chase them away. As it turned out, there was no one else there. Just an empty lot littered with trash and broken bottles.

  Willis parked, got out of the car, opened the trunk, and slapped the man in the face until his eyes lost their glazed look and were able to focus on Willis. There was some defiance in them, as well as some pain, but also a good amount of fear. Willis left the gag in the man’s mouth.

  Willis removed the man’s driver’s license from his wallet and studied it. The man’s name was Dan Johnson. He lived in Saugus, which was only about ten miles north of Boston.

  “Dan Johnson of Saugus,” Willis said, keeping his voice flat. “This is going to go down one of two ways. You’re either going to walk away with only the injuries you have now, or it’s going to get ugly, and here’s how it will get ugly. I will drive you back to your home, carry you inside, and we’ll wait for your family. You might not have any family. It’s very likely given that you work for The Factory. That’s fine. But if you do I will work on each of them in turn for hours. During this time they’ll be begging you to tell me what I want know, and you might or might not break down and do that. It won’t matter. I won’t stop until I’m finished with them. After that I’ll work on you. You might be able to hold out, you might not. You might beg me to let you tell me what I want to know. It won’t change anything. Once I start I’m not stopping until I’m done.”

  Willis smiled slightly in a genial manner as he studied the man’s eyes. All the defiance was gone, and now there was only fear which meant the man did have a family and that he believed what Willis was saying, which made sense since Willis was saying only what he intended to do.

  “Dan, it’s important that you understand the next part. Not just for yourself but for any family you might have. If you cooperate fully with me this will go the easy way. If you’re evasive, or you lie to me, or I believe you’re lying to me, or even if you so much as hesitate in answering me, or try to engage me in any sort of conversation, or simply answer any of my own questions with a question, then this is going to go the hard way. There will be no do-overs, no second chances. If I start down the path of the hard way, then I’ll be playing it out to its conclusion, and nothing you or your family members might say will stop me. Nod if you understand this.”

  The man nodded, his eyes showing the weakness of the defeated.

  “Good. I’m going to remove your gag now.”

  Willis removed the tape from Dan Johnson’s face and took Bowser’s rubber ball from his mouth. Johnson’s mouth puckered into a grimace over the taste of the bull terrier’s toy.

  “Are you going to cooperate?” Willis asked.

  Johnson nodded glumly.

  “No gestures. Words only.”

  “Yes,” Johnson forced out, his voice raspy and weak.

  “Good. Do you know where Barry is now?”

  Alarm showed in Johnson’s eyes, but not from the thought of giving up Barry. Instead it was because he didn’t recognize the name. Willis could see this plainly and so he believed Johnson when he claimed he didn’t know who Barry was.

  “He’s my handler at The Factory. He was the one who sent you to kill me.”

  “Tom Barron,” Johnson said. “That’s his name. Yes, he should be at the office now waiting for me to call him back.”

  “You’re doing well so far. You’re almost home free. Don’t screw this up now. Where’s the office?”

  Johnson gave him the address of a downtown Boston location only a few blocks from Chinatown.

  “What type of building is it?”

  “A high-rise. Fifteen floors.”

  “Underground parking?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any armed security there?”

  There was a flicker in Johnson’s eyes as he considered lying to Willis, but that flicker died out almost instantly and he told Willis there was no security personnel maintained there, or any armed personnel.

  “I thought I saw a flicker in your eyes where you considered lying to me,” Willis said. “Since it might be the lighting around here and I might’ve only imagined what I thought I saw, and I want to be fair since you’ve been cooperating so far, I’ll flip a coin. Heads we continue the easy way, tails we change course and do it the hard way.”

  Willis dug a quarter from his pocket, flipped it, and showed Johnson that it was heads. Johnson’s face collapsed when he saw that. It was as if he barely escaped suffering a major coronary. Of course, Willis didn’t bother telling him that he could flip a coin a hundred times and make it come out heads each time.

  Willis stuck the quarter back in his pocket. “That was your one and only break,” Willis said. “You understand that, right?”

  “Yes,” Johnson whispered, his color having turned chalk white.

  “How do I get into the garage?”

  “My badge will get you in. The gate is automated. You don’t have to show it to anyone.”

  “No voice prints or eye scans?”

  “No, just the badge.”

  “Tell me about the office itself. Any armed security.”

  “No, it’s only midlevel supervisors like Tom Barron. I’m considered support, but I only go in when I’m called, and I think that’s true of other support specialists.”

  “How many others like Barron are working there?”

  Willis could see Johnson start to panic as he desperately tried to count how many the
re were. “I think eight,” he said. “But I’m not sure.”

  “Give me their names.”

  There was more panic wetting his eyes as he thought Willis might think he was lying, “Other than Barron I only know two of them. That’s the way it’s organized. I’ve been assigned to support three of the supervisors. Barron, Allen Grouse and Duane Smithee.”

  “Okay, Dan, we’re almost done. There was that one flicker which I still think I might’ve seen, but I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt on that. You’re almost home free.”

  Willis closed the trunk shut on Johnson and then got back behind the wheel. He was surprised the security would be so lax there. But maybe they needed to keep a low profile, and there would be field offices in every major city. He had no doubt that Johnson believed that only the badge was needed, but it was possible that they had other security measures Johnson wasn’t aware of. Possibly they used a face recognition system. As he drove to where Tom Barron worked, he considered the pros and cons of moving Johnson behind the wheel. He decided it would be better to leave things as they were, and it might even be to his benefit if they were using a face recognition system.

  When Willis got to the building, he found the underground garage and slid Johnson’s badge into a card reader. The gate opened up for him as Johnson had told him it would. He drove to the back where the elevators where located and parked illegally in a fire lane. Then he popped open the trunk, got out, and told Johnson what he was going to say when he called Barron on Johnson’s cell phone. Johnson repeated it word for word, and Willis dialed the number that Johnson gave him, which was a different number than he had for the man he knew as Barry. Once he heard Barron pick up, he held the cell phone close to Johnson’s mouth.