by Jack Mars
He picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Luke? It’s Ed Newsam. Did I wake you?”
Luke was disoriented. “No. What time is it? No, you didn’t wake me. Ed. How are you doing? I’m planning to come see you tomorrow. I’ll bring you some flowers. You want a sandwich? Like a real one, not hospital food.”
“Don’t bother,” Ed said. “I’m leaving in the morning. Listen, we got trouble. Three men just tried to kill me.”
Luke sat up. “What? Where are you?”
“I’m still in the hospital. I’ve got about ten cops in here right now. They’re going to move me to another room, post some guards at the door.”
“Where are the killers?”
There was a pause. “Uh, they’re here on the floor. They didn’t make it. I tried to get an ID on one of them, but he wasn’t into talking. There really wasn’t anything I could do. Turns out they killed the nurse at the nurse’s station, stuffed her under the desk. They came in here wearing masks. If I had to guess, I’d say these guys are not going to come back identifiable. Spooks is what I’m saying. Ghosts.”
Luke ran a hand through his hair. “You killed them all?”
“Yeah. I did.”
There was a long silence over the line.
“You need to watch yourself, Luke. That’s why I called. This thing with the President… it’s all wrong. And these guys sure don’t look Iranian. They look like surfer boys from San Diego. If they tried to get me, they’ll be coming for you, too.”
Luke killed the TV set, then leaned over to the end table and turned off the light. He crouched low and ran to the kitchen. He turned off that light as well. Except for the faint orange glow of the wall switches, and a red LED light on the stereo in the living room, it was now dark on the first floor. Luke crawled into the dining room.
“Luke? You with me?”
“Yeah. I’m here.”
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing, man. I’m good.”
Luke took a corner of the blue dining room carpet and rolled it up. Underneath was a hinged trapdoor built into the hardwood floor. Luke nestled the phone in the crook of his ear, and pulled his key ring out. There were tiny locks left and right, embedded into the trapdoor. He found the small silver keys that fit each lock, slid them in and unlocked the door.
“You going to talk to me?” Ed said.
“I’m getting ready right now, Ed. I think I should hang up.”
“That’s probably a good idea. Good luck, brother.”
“Thanks for the tip.”
Luke let the phone fall to the floor. He opened the trapdoor and pulled a long metal box up and out of it. Another toy chest. Luke kept them salted around the house. He punched in the code from memory and opened the box. This was a bigger box than most.
An M16 rifle. A Remington 870 pump shotgun. A couple more handguns. A hunting knife. Three grenades. Various boxes of ammo, plenty of rounds for the guns. He ran his hand over the grenades. He would try, really try, not to blow up the house. With hands trembling just slightly, maybe from fear, but maybe just from hunger, he began to load up the guns.
The phone rang again. He looked at the readout this time. The caller was blocked. He sighed. He might as well talk to whoever it was. He answered it, hoping for David Delliger, or maybe a late-night telemarketer.
“Luke? It’s Don Morris.”
Luke pressed nine-millimeter rounds into an empty magazine, his fingers moving fast and automatically. As he worked, a piece of the puzzle fell into place with a thud. Don knew something about what was going on. Of course he did. He and the new President were fly-fishing buddies.
“Hi, Don. How do you know the former Speaker?”
“We were at the Citadel together, Luke. Many years ago. After graduation, I joined the real military, and Bill went to law school.”
“I see.”
“Luke, we need to talk.”
“Okay.” Luke filled a magazine and put it aside. He started on the next one. “But if we talk, let’s be honest, shall we?”
“That’s fair,” Don said.
“So why don’t you start?”
Don paused before speaking. “Well… By now, I suppose it’s clear to you what happened today.”
“I’d say it’s crystal clear, Don. It’s suddenly become even clearer as a result of this phone call.”
“I’m glad about that, Luke. That way we don’t have to play footsie here. We can get right to the facts. You’re an old battle-scarred warrior, just like me. You must see that this had to be done. It was for the good of the country. It was for the future of our children, and our children’s children. We cannot allow our enemies to push us around on the world stage. The man in question would have handed over the whole fort without firing a shot. All that’s over with.”
Luke finished another magazine. He started loading a third.
“What happens now?” he said.
“We set some things to right. We put a few people in their place, and we remind everyone out there who’s in charge.”
“After that? What happens with the government?”
“The same thing that happened last time. President Ryan serves out the existing term, in this case three more years. He runs for re-election, or he doesn’t. I imagine he will, but that’s up to him. The people decide who the next President is. Nothing has changed, Luke. The Constitution is still in effect. All we did is press the reset button.”
“The entire civilian government has been decapitated,” Luke said.
“So we’ll fix it.”
“Just a little do-over, eh, Don? Like when we were all kids?”
“Sure. A do-over, if you like.”
“How many people have died for your do-over so far?”
The line was quiet.
“Don?”
“Luke, I’d say about one percent of one percent of one percent of the population. Three hundred and fifty people out of a total of three hundred and fifty million. That’s an estimate, but it’s probably accurate. We’ll know more in the morning. Not a very high price to pay, if you think about it.”
Luke crouched in the darkness. He shrugged into a shoulder holster on his left side, then another on his right. He would strap the M16 to his back. The grenades would go in his cargo pockets. He’d carry the shotgun in his arms and fire that one off first.
He glanced into the living room. Those floor-to-ceiling windows were looking pretty silly right about now. He lived, quite literally, in a glass house. There was no way he could defend this place. He would have to get out of here, most likely through a hail of gunfire.
“Luke?”
“I’m listening, Don.”
“Do you have any questions?”
“Sure. Here’s one. Why did you wake me up in the middle of the night to be part of all this? I hadn’t even clocked in for six months. I hadn’t worked a case in ten.”
Don laughed, and that slow Southern drawl came flowing out like syrup. “It was just a mistake on my part. You’re one of the best operatives I’ve ever seen, but I figured you’d be slow and out of practice after so much time away. And you were a little slow last night, but you caught up quickly. I underestimated you, that’s all. You were supposed to get as far as the Iranian and stop there.”
“So when the White House blew up, we could just blame it on the Iranians?”
“Yes. It could have been that simple.”
“And Begley? What about him?”
Don laughed again. “Ron Begley can’t find his ass with both hands.”
“So he wasn’t in on it?”
“Oh my, no.”
Now Luke almost laughed. That figured. Poor Ron Begley was up there safeguarding Ali Nassar’s rights for reasons he didn’t even understand. He probably thought he was protecting the sanctity of diplomatic immunity. If we don’t respect it here, they won’t respect it over there. Or maybe he was just trying to break Luke’s balls.
“Why are you cal
ling me, Don?”
“Now we get to the meat of it, son. There’s been another warrant issued for your arrest. The chief of staff of the former President managed to call out of Mount Weather before he died. He implicated you in the disaster. You’re wanted for questioning about that. Also, that murder in Baltimore this morning? That’s back on again. It seems that you were in league with the terrorists all along. You led the President to his doom. That little dalliance in Baltimore was you killing off one of your partners to cover your tracks. And we’ve found an off-shore account that we’ve managed to trace to you. There’s more than two million dollars in there.”
Luke smiled.
“Surely you can do better than that?” Luke asked. “Putting money into a fake account in my name.”
“I think that will suffice,” Don said.
“And Ali Nassar?” Luke asked.
“Your paymaster? He died about an hour ago. It was a suicide. He jumped from the balcony at his apartment. Fifty stories, can you imagine? Luckily, he hit a concrete overhang on the third floor. No one on the street was injured.”
Luke shrugged. He was no fan of Ali Nassar. Whatever Nassar thought he was doing, he had to know it was wrong. And he had to know his own death was a distinct possibility. If he didn’t, then he was a bigger fool than he seemed. “That’s convenient,” Luke said. “Another one bites the dust.”
“Indeed.”
“And now you want me to surrender peacefully, I suppose.”
“I would like you to, yes.”
“Not much hope of that, is there?”
“Luke…”
From Luke’s location in the dining room, he could see out the big south and west facing windows in the living room. The house sat up on a little rolling hillock of grass. The height extended his vantage point. It was a quiet neighborhood. Most residents parked in their own driveways or garages.
To the south, two unmarked squad cars were parked nose to nose at the next corner. They were fast cars, the kind that the government confiscated from drug dealers. Their windows were dark. They looked like spiders crouched there, waiting. To the west, at the far northern corner of the window, he could see a black van parked up at the next street. That was all he could see from here. There were probably others.
“If there’s a warrant out for me,” Luke said, “then why not just send some cops? All I see are spooks.”
Don laughed. “Ah, well. Warrant might have been a strong word. Let’s just say we’d like you to come in and have a chat.”
Of course. There were no police involved at all. If Luke went out there and surrendered, they would just get rid of him. He would drop into a black hole and never be heard from again.
That wasn’t going to happen.
“I can promise you a bloodbath, Don. If you come after me, I will put all of the men outside my house, plus ten, or twenty, or thirty more, in the ground. That’s a lot of widows and orphans. Test me on this.”
Don’s voice was quiet. “Luke, I want you to listen to me very carefully. This is the most important thing I’ve ever had to tell you. Are you listening? Can you hear me?”
“I’m listening,” Luke said.
“They’ve taken your wife and son.”
“What?”
“None of this concerns you, Luke. It never did. You were window dressing, a bit player in a much larger drama. If you had gone home when I suspended you this morning, none of what followed would have happened. But you didn’t go home, and as a result you’ve put Rebecca and Gunner at terrible risk. They’re fine and they haven’t been harmed, but you have to listen to me. If you quit now, just stop what you’re doing, and walk out of the house with your hands in the air, it will all be fine. If you insist on continuing with this… foolishness…” He paused. “I don’t know what will happen.”
“Don, what are you saying?”
“It’s not your fight, Luke, or mine. This is bigger than we are.”
“Don, if you hurt my family—”
“It isn’t me. You know I would never hurt your family. I love them as though they were my own. I’m just the messenger. Please remember that.”
“Don—”
“It’s your choice, Luke.”
“Don!”
The line went dead.
Chapter 41
11:15 p.m.
Queen Anne’s County, Maryland - Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay
Rebecca lay upright in bed, staring into the darkness. On the end table next to her, the telephone started to ring. She looked at it. She could see the readout from here. It was Luke calling. But she could not move. It would give her away. Someone, she knew, was inside her house.
She lay there, frozen in place, her heart thumping in her chest. She had awakened to their footsteps downstairs, heavy bodies stepping carefully. This was an old, old house, and the floorboards creaked. There was almost nowhere to walk that wouldn’t creak at least a little.
There it was again. A heavy step downstairs, trying to be quiet, trying to be stealthy. Another one came, across the living room from the first. At least two people were down there. Outside her bedroom window, she heard more footsteps padding on the grass below. People were moving around outside the house.
A realization came to her. It took a moment because she had been asleep when the sounds started. Gunner was here in the house with her.
Oh God. She had to get him out.
What could she do? Luke kept his weapons locked away. She had made him do that so Gunner could never find them one day when he was alone.
She slid out of bed, careful where she put her feet on the floor. She yanked her nightie over her head and off. She pulled on the same pair of jeans and the shirt she had worn in the daytime. A plan started to form in her mind. She would go to Gunner’s room, wake him very quietly, then open his window. They would both climb out and silently cross the low sloping roof outside his bedroom. If no one spotted them, they would climb down the gutter downspout, then run like hell to the nearest neighbor’s house, a quarter of a mile away.
That was it. That was the entire plan.
She looked up and gasped. Gunner came in, wearing his Walking Dead T-shirt and his pajama pants. He rubbed his eyes.
“Mom? Did you hear something?”
Approaching out of the dark just behind Gunner was a very tall man. He had a prominent Adam’s apple. His face was flat and blank. His expression did not seem to reach his eyes. His eyes were dead. He grinned at her.
His voice was pleasant. He sounded amused.
“Hello, Mrs. Stone,” he said. “Did we wake you?”
Gunner screamed, startled by the deep voice just behind him. He ran to her. Becca slid him behind her. Her breath seemed trapped in her throat. Her breathing sounded like a locomotive. Then an odd thought occurred to her.
“That’s okay, little lady,” the man said. “We’re not going to hurt you. Yet.”
The thought was about Luke. He was so paranoid, probably because of the terrible things he had seen. In the days when he was still deploying overseas for weeks at a time, he had taught her to defend herself. But what he showed her wasn’t like kickboxing or karate. He didn’t teach her to flip or punch anyone.
No. He brought home these very lifelike, heavy, anatomically correct dummies. Luke taught her how to gouge their eyes out by plunging her fingers deep into the eye sockets. He taught her to bite their noses off. Off! All the way off, just dig her teeth in deep, and rip the nose right off the face. He taught her to crush, not squeeze, their testicles. He taught her to shove her hand all the way into someone’s mouth and down their throat. He showed her how to permanently damage another human being, especially one that was bigger and stronger than she was.
She remembered Luke’s sunny smile while talking about this. “If a time comes when you have no choice but to fight, then you have to hurt the other person. And not just a little. Not even a lot. You have to hurt them all the way, so that they can’t get up and do the same or worse to you
.”
Could she do it? Could she hurt this man? If left on her own, she thought not. But Gunner was here.
The man walked up to her. He came very close. He wore boots, khaki pants and a T-shirt. He pressed his body against hers, but didn’t touch her with his hands. His chest lightly touched her face. She could feel his body heat. He pressed his hands against the wall behind her. The man’s body pushed her backwards.
“You like that?” he said. He breathed deeply. “I can tell, you’re not going to miss your husband at all.”
Gunner made a sound behind her, like an animal squeal.
Becca screamed, just like Luke taught her to do. The scream unleashed her energy. She rammed both hands up and into the man’s balls. She grabbed for them and through his pants, she squeezed as hard as she could. She took them in a death grip. Then she tried to rip them away from his body.
The man’s eyes went wide in shock. He made a gasping sound, then fell to the floor with a thud. His mouth was agape in a silent shriek. His hands were at his groin. His pants were staining with blood. She had hurt him. She had hurt him very badly.
She turned to Gunner. “Come on! We have to get out of here.”
Chapter 42
11:17 p.m.
Fairfax County, Virginia - Suburbs of Washington, DC
“Hi, this is Becca. I can’t answer your call right now. Please leave a message after the tone, and I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”
Luke hung up. There was no sense leaving a message.
He had moved downstairs. The house had a finished half-basement. It opened to a walkout at the bottom of the little hill, between his house and the neighbor’s house. That door was a vulnerable spot, and at first, this was the reason Luke went to it. Luke crouched at the door, in near pitch-darkness, staring at his neighbor’s house. That house gave him an idea.
The question was: Did he dare act on it?
Throughout his career, he had done everything in his power to shield Becca and Gunner from the realities of his work. Becca knew what he did for a living, but she knew very little of what that actually meant. Gunner, in his own way, was closer to the truth. He thought his dad was James Bond.