False Prophet: The gripping breakthrough thriller (A Saul Marshall Thriller 1)

by Richard Davis

  I ducked back behind the parapet. 8:55. Five minutes till lights down.

  ‘How we doing out there?’ I said. ‘I’m all set up and ready.’

  ‘They’re herding in,’ Vann replied, with an edge to his voice – the sound of someone doing a five man job alone. ‘It’s hard to get a good look at everyone. But, so far, I’ve seen nothing suspicious.’

  I started counting down the seconds. Four minutes to nine… three minutes…

  Then Vann’s voice came again. His tone told me instantly it was something major.

  ‘Saul, we’ve got something developing. I’ve got a visual on Samuel. He’s just arrived in a blue Ford Escort, driven by a red-headed man… Red is killing the engine and getting out… he’s 5’7”, skinny, pale – in jeans, a red-checked shirt, and windbreaker… his left hand in his jeans pocket, grasping something… now he’s at Samuel’s door, and Samuel’s getting out… he’s wearing black jeans – a plain blue shirt under a red windbreaker… now they’re both heading for the entrance… they’ve entered the crowd… I’m going to get closer.’

  A pause.

  ‘Shit,’ he whispered – evidently closer now, and needing to regulate his volume. ‘I reckon Red has a pistol in his windbreaker’s right pocket. I can see the outline. And he’s aiming it at Samuel’s back. And there’s more. I think I can see… yes, I can see a wiring at Samuel’s neckline and a bulge under his shirt. Can’t be sure, but think it’s a bomb vest. If it is, I bet that’s a detonator in Red’s left.’

  I could feel my heart working. My son in a bomb vest… a gun to his back…

  I had to keep calm. Think clearly.

  ‘No chance of a clean head shot?’ I whispered.

  ‘Too many people. All on the move. Collateral damage assured.’

  ‘And others can’t see what’s going on?’

  ‘You wouldn’t see unless looking for it. They’re entering now. I’ll follow.’

  No sooner had he said this than the lights went down.

  I leveled the rifle’s muzzle over the parapet, and put my eye to the night-scope.

  It seemed like Drexler’s plan was to blow the place to kingdom come, and my son was to be the bomb. Both unwilling accomplice and victim.

  Should I tell Vann to shoot Red before he sends Samuel in? Wasn’t the collateral damage preferable to the alternative? Would Vann be able to get the sort of head shot required to stop Red’s finger involuntarily activating the detonator on the bullet’s impact?

  A handful of people were still entering. Silence was falling. And I was just about to tell Vann to risk it and take the shot, when he said:

  ‘They’re both entering the main theater. Orchestra seats. Left-hand side.’

  So Red was entering too. Did this mean a suicide mission? On one hand, this spelt trouble – because when a man’s willing to die for a cause, you know you’ve got a problem. On the other hand, it was promising – because it meant Red could be about to stray into my far more precise line of fire.

  I waited. Seconds ticked by.

  Samuel appeared first in my lens, moving quickly down the aisle between the left and central seating areas. This was the first time I’d seen him in over two years. And though I recognized him instantly, I’d never seen him move this way before – he was walking with stiff, jilted movements, as though his bones were rusted with fear. I’d no doubt the bulge just visible beneath his shirt was the cause.

  Did the bomb only have a very small blast radius, so Red could watch from afar then escape unscathed? I doubted it. Because Drexler was behind this, and he’d want fireworks.

  Samuel stopped two rows from the front and turned right into the central seating area. People stood to let him pass. There was an empty seat, roughly in the middle, towards which he was moving. It was the position of maximum impact. The optimum place to target both cast and audience.

  Before Samuel had gotten to his seat, Red entered my field of vision, just as the orchestra music was starting. A second later, I had him in my scope’s illuminated optics and watched as he moved along the left-hand aisle in close proximity to three other stragglers, his left hand planted in his jeans pocket. I recognized him instantly as the boy who’d had his arm around Mortimer in the photo on Olivia’s laptop.

  Almost in the same moment, Mortimer walked on stage, and started speaking.

  What I needed to do was lodge a bullet in Red’s brainstem. Only by hitting this small area on the back of his skull, an inch wide, could I ensure that no post-death muscular spasms would cause Red’s finger to activate the detonator when the bullet struck. But making this shot was easier said than done, since Red remained on the move and in close proximity to innocents. So I did the only thing I could: I waited as he continued down the aisle, then at last ducked left, and began shifting along the sixth row of the left-hand seating area…

  Eventually Red sat down in the fourth seat from the left.

  Finally, I had the back of his head in my crosshairs. But there was a big problem. The two rows in front of Red were full – and since the rifle had a muzzle velocity of over 929 yards-a-second, this meant that from whatever point along the Upper Balcony a shot were to be taken, the bullet would go through Red’s head, and into the neck of someone in the row in front. And then probably into the chest of someone in the row in front of that…

  ‘I’ve got the brainstem shot,’ I whispered to Vann. ‘But impossible to make it without collateral.’

  ‘I’m at a fire alarm. Give me the word, and I’ll set her off,’ he replied.

  Samuel’s vest could blow at any moment. So surely it was worth sacrificing two lives to prevent the whole place going up in flames? But even as I thought this, I caught a glimpse of the two empty boxes to the right of the stage, and realized the higher one would afford me a clear shot at Red’s brainstem through the side of his head, with zero collateral damage – since all three seats to his left were empty. But it’d take at least sixty seconds to get over there and be ready: ten to pack the gun, forty to sprint over, ten to unpack.

  Was it worth risking all our lives in the hope of saving two?

  But maybe I had the time. After all, there must’ve been a reason why Red hadn’t done the deed already. Perhaps he was waiting for a specific time: for the entire cast to be on stage, or a particular part of the play. Or maybe he was psyching himself out. The way he was restlessly bobbing in his seat said this was a real possibility…

  I made my decision.

  ‘Stand by,’ I hissed. ‘Getting a cleaner shot from the box.’

  With only the sound of Mortimer speaking onstage to mask the noise, I speedily dissembled the gun. Then I bolted out the balcony door and began charging down the stairs towards the box on the second floor. Despite running flat-out, I felt like I was moving in slow motion – like I was destined not to make it before the all-engulfing fire-ball hit. But then, the next thing I knew, I was in the box and reassembling the rifle. And as I did so, I could hear how the character Mortimer was planning to kill himself, and registered in the back of my mind that this was how the play started: with Mortimer’s suicide. And I wondered if, because of my own decision to delay, I’d end up losing my life – a kind of self-induced destruction…

  Then, before I knew it, the gun was ready, and the muzzle over the parapet, trained on Red’s head. I’d made it in time.

  I steadied my breath and prepared to squeeze the trigger.

  But then, suddenly, there was a rapturous noise: a mixture of screams and standing ovation. The woman next to Red jumped to her feet and shrieked, pointing at the stage.

  I panned over. The actor playing Mortimer had slit his throat for real. There was blood everywhere, sputtering from the gash like a garden sprinkler.

  This must’ve been the moment Red had been waiting for to detonate the bomb. But I hadn’t fired; hadn’t neutralized the target.

  ‘Hit the alarm,’ I shouted to Vannevar.

  The fire alarm joined the screams. The hall descended into anar
chy.

  Chapter 17

  Wednesday, February 27, 2013.

  The lights went up, and the staff came hurrying in. But there was no explosion. No fire-ball.

  Both Samuel and Red, however, were already on their feet, and pushing towards the fire-exit on the far side. They were both ahead of the rush, having begun their evacuation the moment Mortimer slit his throat.

  ‘They’re heading for the car-park,’ I said.

  ‘I’m there already,’ Vann replied. ‘Their car’s bugged.’

  I tore the rifle apart with savage pace and barged out the theater, exiting via the fire-door on the opposite side. I then bolted to the back of the building, just in time to see the blue Ford careering down the small service road, before turning left onto West Morgan Street. And though it’d passed quickly, I’d clearly seen Samuel behind the wheel, no doubt following the instructions of the red-headed man sitting to his right. I sprinted back to the building’s front to find Vann among the panicked bodies. Without a word, the two of us powered across the walkway and towards the car-park where Vann had left the car. But we weren’t quick enough: by the time we were in the car, and trying to turn onto West Morgan, the road was at a standstill with emergency vehicles.

  ‘Shit!’ I said.

  ‘Easy now,’ said Vannevar.

  I looked over. He already had the GPRS receiver on his lap.

  ‘I’ve got them,’ he said. ‘Looks like they’re heading towards the I-85.’

  It calmed me to see that Vannevar had things in hand. With the GPRS on side, I knew we had every chance of catching them up.

  I nosed onto West Morgan, and began worming my way through emergency vehicles. As I did so, Vann turned towards me and said:

  ‘What on earth happened in there?’

  ‘You remember the kid playing Mortimer – the character that was supposed to kill himself in the first scene? Well, the prop knife was switched for a real one. So the kid ended up accidentally slicing his own carotid artery. He’s dead. No doubt about it.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘It was right before our eyes. Neither an accident nor suicide. Well, if the knife swap was premeditated – which undoubtedly it was – then it follows that we’re looking at murder, not suicide. This is Drexler flaunting a new method of getting his victim to take their own life. This time, instead of trapping his victim in a situation, Drexler’s fooled him into self-murder. And the results were sensational.’

  Vann’s eyes were glazed in thought.

  ‘The target was only ever Mortimer,’ I continued. ‘The bomb was merely there to force Samuel to watch – to facilitate some bizarre psychological torture.’

  ‘How did they get out the building so quickly?’

  ‘They were both on their feet the moment the actor slit his throat.’

  ‘Does that mean Samuel knew what was coming?’ Vann probed.

  I paused a moment: ‘He may have known. But if he did, I don’t think that necessarily means he knew at the time of writing his note. It’s just as likely that some days ago he’d picked up on a vague hint which he put in his note, and then was told exactly what was going to happen just before entering the theater. Then again, maybe he never knew more than a vague hint, and was simply told to evacuate when he received a certain cue, such as a pager vibrating in his pocket.’

  ‘Or,’ said Vann thoughtfully, ‘he knew precisely what was in store when writing the message but for some reason, felt unable to spell it out…’

  During the silence which followed this comment I finally finished weaving my way past the last fire truck and turned right onto North Duke Street.

  ‘Do me a favor,’ I said. ‘Look up the online review for that play in the Duke University student paper, published a day or so ago.’

  Vann brought up the page on his phone.

  ‘You see the photo?’ I said.

  ‘You bet. Red’s real name’s Dean Lofkin. And the way he’s got his arm around Mortimer is about as sick-making as it gets.’ He paused. ‘It says Lofkin was a set designer.’

  ‘So now we know how the knife wound up behind the scenes.’

  I hustled the Crown Vic onto the I-85, joining the eastbound lane, just as the GPRS told us Lofkin had done. Then, as I crushed the accelerator, my mind turned again to Olivia. I knew that not only would news of the actor’s death already be all over the internet – in various incomplete and embellished forms – but also that Olivia would be at her laptop reading these accounts. Even if I couldn’t tell Olivia everything, I felt obliged to tell her Samuel was alive.

  But more than that, I was also aware that while everyone else would consider this incident a freak accident, Olivia knew better. If she suddenly lost her cool, and told Parkes the truth, the consequences could be fatal.

  I dialed her on my mobile. She picked up immediately

  ‘Tell me it wasn’t Samuel,’ she said tensely. ‘Tell me he wasn’t the one with the knife across his throat.’

  The news had traveled fast. But as I’d suspected, it was incomplete.

  ‘It wasn’t Samuel,’ I replied quickly. She exhaled hard.

  ‘So where’s Samuel?’ she said.

  ‘He’s alive and in one piece. He was at the theater. But we don’t have him. He’s now being transported by a solitary hostage-taker. Vannevar and I, unbeknown to this hostage-taker, are tailing the vehicle. You have to trust us.’

  ‘It wasn’t an accident, was it? The boy cutting his own throat? That’s what people are saying on the internet.’

  ‘No, Olivia, it was the people who’ve taken Samuel.’

  There was a heavy silence, and I knew what she was thinking: if these people are capable of this, what might they have in store for Samuel? I could sense her panic stirring.

  ‘We’ve got to tell Parkes,’ she said suddenly. ‘We’ve got to.’

  I had to make Olivia understand.

  ‘Look, Olivia. If you tell Parkes about what’s just happened in Durham, the Bureau will descend on the theater, and Samuel’s captors will see that the FBI know this was no accident. And then they’ll get to thinking that maybe the FBI had known something was going to happen in Durham beforehand, and maybe they’d had people in the area at the time. Which would mean that maybe their man is being tailed. It’d take no more than that for Samuel’s escort to receive a warning, and for Vann and I to lose the element of surprise… And that could be fatal.’

  Olivia ground her teeth as she took this in. ‘Why didn’t you get Samuel if he was at the theater?’ she said accusingly. ‘What went wrong?’

  I could tell by the way she’d dropped the subject of telling Parkes that she’d accepted my point. But she was still feeling angry and frustrated. There was only so much I could say to reassure her.

  ‘There was a mix-up,’ I said gently, leaving out the bomb vest in what I considered a merciful omission. ‘It’s a tricky place, a theater: lots of innocent folk, lots of scope for collateral damage. But we’ll get him, Olivia. I promise.’

  There was a heavy sigh, followed by a considerable silence. Eventually Olivia’s voice came again, only this time it was tired, weary.

  ‘Lester’s so worried about me. I told him I was too sick to see anybody this evening, and quarantined myself in the bedroom. He thinks I’m out of my mind. Maybe I am…’

  ‘You’re being incredibly brave.’

  ‘Please get him back. Please.’

  ‘I will.’

  Chapter 18

  After traveling along the I-85 for 125 miles, Lofkin went north on the I-95, clockwise around the westernmost limit of Richmond, then joined the westbound lane of the I-64. And as Vann and I tailed him, we discussed the situation. We agreed that attempting to take Lofkin out in transit was too risky, and that ideally we’d neutralize him with the sniper once he’d stopped. We also agreed, after an internet search of Lofkin’s name came back with nothing, that he must’ve joined The Order in secret while continuing to lead a seemingly ordinary life.

  But w
hen we got about twenty miles along the I-64 – putting us some two-hundred miles, and three hours away from The Carolina Theater – our conversation turned to how we would set about ambushing Lofkin were he to stop for food or gas, since such an eventuality was looking increasingly likely. And, sure enough, scarcely had we started discussing this when Lofkin made a decisive move: taking Exit 158 off the I-64 and joining a single carriage road leading into the heart of Louisa County, Virginia. We followed suit, but held a little further back, since we were more conspicuous on this country round.

  After Lofkin traveled fifteen miles along this road, the GPRS told us he’d entered a town called Mineral, a small settlement comprising a main drag running from south to north; a grid of residential roads to its west; and a small park to its southeast. Lofkin entered the town at the south of the main stretch. Then, instead of passing straight through, he slowed near the top and took a left, following the road down to the end, before finally coming to a halt. The map on the receiver told us he’d stopped outside a large isolated property.

  Vann and I were still some four minutes behind, and Vann used this time to throw Mineral into a search engine. From this we learned that the place took up less than a single square mile; that it had a population of about 400; and that it was named after the gold-mining which had once gone on there. In short, it was the sort of generic backwater town where nothing ever happens.

  Yet when we finally arrived at the bottom of the main stretch, it was clear that something was happening here. Though there was nobody about – as you’d expect at midnight – the town was crammed with parked cars. The parking lot of a small supermarket a third of the way up the road was playing host to maybe two-hundred vehicles.