End Game

by David Baldacci

  you he’s a lying sack of shit.”

  “No, he didn’t say that. We know he was the assistant manager here. At least that’s what he told the drug rehab people on the intake form.”

  “He was the assistant manager. But that was only because I’m the manager and he was my only employee. He worked when I didn’t and vice versa. I can’t afford two people here at the same time, except on Fridays during football. Then me and Clément would work together. Place is open till two in the mornings on the weekends. During the week we open at six, close at ten. We’d split the shifts. Sometimes I’d do the mornings and then nights. Same for him.”

  “How long was he here?”

  “About two years, I guess. Then he just stopped coming in. I mean, I kept his sorry ass on even after he stole from me, and look what that got me. Nothing. So I had to hire somebody else. Still have his last paycheck. But I deducted the cost of the crap he stole, including the Ho Hos.” He paused. “Wait a minute. Why don’t you just ask Clément about what he saw?”

  “We’d love to. But he left rehab and then disappeared.”

  “Huh. That’s strange. I always figured he’d come back here at least for his paycheck.”

  “Where did he live?”

  “Well, sometimes he lived in the back room here on a cot. Other times there was a place about five miles from here off the main road. A house.”

  “Was it his house?”

  “Shit, Clément never owned no house. He owned a piece-of-crap Datsun pickup that was older than he was. It was held together with duct tape and a Lord’s Prayer a day.”

  “So whose house?”

  “Some chick, I think. Give me a sec.” He scratched his chin and said, “Beverly something. Clément held an attraction to certain ladies. Till they realized he was a no-good SOB looking to take what he wanted, and then they’d kick him out.”

  “Can you give us the address?” asked Robie.

  Sonny did so, writing it down on a piece of paper after consulting a record book under the counter. “He had to give me the address for payroll purposes. Don’t know if he was living there when he stopped coming to work, but it’s the only address I got for him.”

  He pulled a slip of paper from a file behind the counter and held it out to Reel.

  “This is his last paycheck. If you see him, give it to him. He earned it.”

  “I hope we can,” said Reel, taking the check.

  They left the store while Sonny watched them from the door. Then they climbed into the truck and Robie started it up.

  “You think he’s on the up-and-up?” Reel asked.

  “I assume guilty until proven otherwise. It just seems smarter in our line of work.” He glanced at the check. “How much is it for?”

  She looked at the slip of paper. “Two hundred bucks and change.”

  “You think that’s for a full week’s work?”

  Reel studied the pay stub attached to the check. “That’s what it says. Why?”

  “That’s about ten grand a year.”

  “Yeah. Some American dream.”

  “Right. I’d be pissed off, too.”

  As they pulled down the road Robie said, “You know you said the skinheads would be coming for us?”

  “Yeah?”

  He pointed behind them. “Well, you were right.” He punched the gas.

  Chapter

  30

  REEL TURNED TO see three pickup trucks behind them. There were three men in the cabs of each along with four men in the cargo holds.

  She closed her eyes, and something popped into her head.

  When Reel reopened her eyes, she was back in Iraq.

  Robie glanced over at her then took a look in the rearview. “They’re gaining. You want to do something about that?”

  When she didn’t respond, Robie said, “Jess?”

  She blinked rapidly and shivered, like someone had dropped a bucket of ice on her head.

  “Jess? You okay?”

  Reel turned and looked at the men and the trucks again. In her mind’s eye the skinheads turned darker and beards appeared on the fronts of their faces. They wore robes and head coverings. And in the bed of each truck was a .50-cal machine gun that was pointed directly at them.

  “No, I’m not.”

  Robie gave her a searching glance. “Okay, slide over and take the wheel.”

  “What?” she said, her features confused.

  “Take the wheel and just keep us pointed straight. I got this.”

  She undid her seat harness, as did Robie.

  He had put the truck on cruise control, so his foot wasn’t even on the gas.

  “You go over, I’ll go under,” said Robie.

  She put her hands on the wheel just as he let go.

  The first shots fired from their pursuers impacted the rear glass of the Yukon, shattering it.

  Reel stopped moving and ducked down.

  “Come on, Jess, move your ass. Things are getting tight.”

  She regrouped and kept sliding, arching her back and legs in a yoga-like move to allow Robie to pass by underneath her. He slid into the passenger seat just as her butt hit the driver’s-side seat and she focused on the road up ahead.

  Robie slid over the front seat into the back. Staying low, he took out Reel’s rifle and loaded it blind, keeping his gaze on the truck coming for them.

  “They’re getting ready to fire again,” he warned. He glanced nervously back at Reel, hoping that whatever had gripped her wouldn’t prevent her from keeping the truck on the road when the incoming fire occurred. “You can do this, Jess. I know you can do it and so do you.”

  The men in the truck beds opened fire, and Robie kept flattened in the back of the Yukon until the stream of bullets had passed.

  The truck was holding straight and true, so Robie set up the rifle, took his sighting through the scope, and did what the idiots behind them should have already done.

  He took out the front tires of the lead truck with two quick trigger pulls.

  A vehicle moving that fast over uneven roads and losing its two front tires was not something that was going to end well.

  Robie watched as the truck swerved to the right. The driver committed the cardinal error that had doomed so many others in the age of automobiles.

  He overcorrected.

  This sent the truck veering off at a sharp angle to the left. The tires left the asphalt, and then the point of no return had been reached.

  The tires hit a soft spot in the dirt, dug in, and held.

  And the truck flipped bow to aft. The men in the back were hurled out of the space, screaming and their limbs flailing, their guns falling from their grips, because they wouldn’t be needing them anymore. They wouldn’t be needing anything anymore.

  They hit the dirt, rolled, and hit again.

  The engine caught fire simultaneously with the cracked gas tank’s vapor being released.

  “It’s going to blow,” called out Robie to Reel.

  And a second later the truck became a blast furnace, cremating the men still inside.

  An errant shot popped out of the cab as superheated ammo went off without the aid of a finger pulling a trigger.

  “Keep it steady, Jess.”

  There were two more trucks back there.

  As Robie lined up his sights on the next truck, the skinheads finally wised up.

  First the left rear tire was hit and then the right. The Yukon started to shake violently.

  “Hold it steady, Jess,” called out Robie.

  Another bullet whizzed through the blown-out back glass, passed through the length of the truck, careened off a doorjamb, shot sideways, and took off a chunk of the steering wheel. The chunk flew back and hit Reel in the forehead, snapping her head backward against the seat, and then she was propelled forward, only coming to a halt when her harness engaged.

  As she slipped into unconsciousness, she looked up ahead and saw the straight road. She also knew they had lost two tires.


  Somewhere in the depths of her muscle memory a survival spark engaged.

  She clamped her knees around the wheel and wedged her ankles against the console and the door.

  Then, blood dripping down her face from where the chunk of hard rubber had collided with her head, Reel passed out.

  “Jess? Jess, you okay?”

  When Robie looked to the front of the Yukon he saw Reel slumped over. “Jess!”

  The cruise control was still engaged.

  They were still going at a high rate of speed.

  But they had two blown-out rear tires.

  And nobody was driving.

  Robie had no choice. He abandoned his rifle and threw himself over the seat, even as the Yukon started to slide off the road as Reel’s legs lost their rigidity.

  Robie grabbed the wheel with one hand and fought to keep the Yukon steady and on the road. But they were vibrating so badly now that he knew that couldn’t last.

  A few seconds later a tire came off the rear rim, which made the truck lopsided. It pitched to the left like a boat in heavy seas.

  Robie couldn’t keep it on the road at this point.

  He used a finger to punch off the cruise control.

  This made the control situation better as their speed dropped.

  He hit the gas with his foot to keep them moving forward.

  He used his free hand to check Reel’s pulse. It pumped strongly in her veins. He glanced down at the wound on her forehead. It was bloody but not deep. Her breathing was steady. He eyed where the missing chunk of steering wheel had been, and what had happened to her came into clearer focus.

  He looked back and his features grew grim.

  The trucks were right behind them and a dozen guns were pointed their way.

  Robie cut the wheel to the right and the Yukon cleared the road and bumped over the uneven ground.

  Robie hit the gas and then cut the wheel to the left, aiming for a stand of trees.

  He reached it, slammed the truck into park, leapt back over the seat, and took up his sniper rifle once again.

  The trucks pulled to a stop twenty yards away.

  Robie placed his crosshairs on the driver in one of the trucks.

  He didn’t have enough ammo to take them all out, but he would take as many as he could with him. One less hatemonger alive was always a good thing.

  His finger slipped to the trigger guard. His plan was simple.

  Go down fighting.

  The men climbed out of the truck beds. They had an assortment of shotguns, rifles, MP5s, pistols, and UMPs.

  With all Robie had done over the years, all the dangerous countries where he could have died so many times, he had never imagined taking his last breath in rural Colorado.

  But so be it, he thought.

  At least Reel wouldn’t see it coming. She would die peacefully.

  He expected them to simply start shooting, engulfing the Yukon in fields of fire until a round found its mark or the gas tank exploded.

  Instead, two men climbed out of the second truck.

  And they were pulling someone along with them.

  Holly Malloy’s face was bruised and bloody. Her clothes were torn. She looked half dead on her feet.

  One of the skins put a muzzle against her temple. “You put your fucking gun down and come out here or the bitch gets it right now. You got two seconds. One…”

  Chapter

  31

  ROBIE WAS SHACKLED and sitting next to Reel, who still had not regained consciousness, but sat slumped to the side.

  On the other side of her was Holly, similarly shackled and also gagged.

  They hadn’t been able to talk at all after Robie had put down his weapon and the skins had hustled him out of the Yukon and carried the unconscious Reel behind him. They were now in a panel van that had driven up a few minutes after the battle had ended.

  They were seated on the floor in the back with three skins across from them, pointing weapons at their heads.

  Reel’s head lolled around and came to rest against Robie’s.

  One of the skins grinned at him. “We’re gonna so mess you up, asshole.”

  “Not the first time I’ve heard that.”

  The man sneered. “You and the bitch got lucky before. Now your luck’s run out.”

  “Not the first time I’ve heard that either. You know we’re federal agents. You want to bring that kind of attention down on you?”

  “I see it as a bonus. Government’s the enemy. And you’re the fucking government in spades.”

  It seemed that they had been driving a long time before the van slowed, then stopped and then started up again, but only for a short distance. Robie thought he could hear some sort of machinery running.

  The back doors of the van opened and more men appeared there. They were all skinheads, tatted with swastikas and other symbols of hate. They looked more like rabid animals than human beings, what with their malevolent eyes and bared teeth.

  Reel moaned, twitched, and then opened her eyes.

  She looked around, and as her thoughts passed from fuzzy to firm, she snapped back to her old self and her expression grew grim but focused.

  She looked at Robie and whispered, “Sorry.”

  “No need,” he whispered back. “Look to your left.”

  Reel turned and saw the bound and gagged Holly. “Shit,” she muttered under her breath.

  They were pulled up and hauled outside, their shoes hitting dirt a moment later. They were prodded and pushed toward a plywood-and-shingle building that was set inside a tall wire fence. The machinery sound that Robie had heard was the motorized gate, which had opened to allow them entry to the compound of twenty-first-century Hitler lovers.

  “Déjà vu all over again,” Reel hissed behind him.

  He simply nodded at this and kept walking. Gun muzzles periodically poked him in the back, just because the armed men could do so without fear of attack.

  Robie looked right and left and took in the entire compound, which looked like an Army outpost. Men in mismatched uniforms jeered at them. They carried rifles over their shoulders, and some had World War II–era Nazi caps and tunics with German medals on them. Some wore the black uniforms of the Gestapo. There were also 1940s-era military jeeps, half-tracks, and what looked like a small tank. For a moment Robie thought he had stepped back in time. But then he decided they had probably just bought the shit from some military surplus goods store.

  Or maybe they got it online. You could buy anything on the web if you knew where to look.

  One line of men stood by silently. They were all on aluminum crutches with their lower legs bandaged and their feet booted. These were the men that Reel had shot in downtown Grand when they had attacked Luke at the B&B.