A Soldier's Revenge Read online

  The justices left the room, leaving Fleet and the AG to remain at the table, deep in thought.

  Fleet said, “Sir, I want to thank you for this.”

  “I’ve laid it out, Marty. But I’ve no idea which way this’ll go.” He smiled sympathetically. “There are a lot of self-interests at stake. You realize that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, why did you want to take this on?”

  Fleet sighed. “Because Philip Knox of the CIA said that Cochrane was a dog whose masters didn’t love him anymore and kicked him out of their backyard to fend for himself. If Knox thinks that way, so do others. It occurred to me that mentality is very wrong.”

  The justices came back into the room earlier than expected.

  The chief justice asked those in favor of the AG’s proposal to raise their hands.

  Only one associate justice did so.

  Edward Carley’s luxury cruiser was gently rocking in the harbor at the Montauk Yacht Club, in an erratic wind that caused the numerous vessels berthed there to sway, their fittings clanging.

  Dark skies and sleet had sent most of the boats’ owners scurrying back into the holds of their vessels or onto dry land to lunch in five-star restaurants. Carley had no desire to eat. He’d ordered his crew to leave him in peace as he sat in his boat’s office and cut out segments of the Washington Post.

  What had happened at the Granges’ place had been front-page news; the subsequent NYPD briefing had been too late to make today’s papers, though Carley had watched it on his laptop. If Cochrane was able today to get hold of a copy of the newspaper, it would be interesting to see how he reacted. If successful, it would be the end of matters for Cochrane or would keep him on the run in a world of pain.

  The former battlefield surgeon wondered how Cochrane was feeling—no doubt mentally and physically exhausted, utterly alone, and driven to help Tom. The latter was important. His yearning kept Cochrane moving. Without it, he’d hand himself in or kill himself. That could still happen, but Carley was hoping that the kidnapping would keep him on the run and in agony.

  That was the objective. Prison and death would be too easy a way out. A life on the run would be a life of misery.

  He called Viktor Zhukov. “The latest classified ad is now in print. We must anticipate the possibility that this will break him and he will call the police. I hope that proves not to be the case. It’s essential his voice is heard and equipment is then removed.”

  He ended the call and smiled.

  Dickie Mountjoy unpacked his belongings in the apartment near Times Square. Outside, the brash and constant noises of the city would have irritated some visitors, but Dickie was a Londoner; he knew city life all too well, and the din of New York barely registered in his ears and brain.

  The apartment was adequate for his needs and not dissimilar in size to his own home, though this one only contained one bedroom. He’d already examined the kitchen and decided the oven was man enough for the job of cooking his favorite beef and ale pie, a dish his wife always used to cook him on Saturday evenings.

  When she had died three years ago, Dickie had no idea how to cook the dish. But his wife had a handwritten book of recipes that her mother had given her when she and Dickie tied the knot. It had taken him dozens of attempts to cook her pie before he was satisfied he’d gotten it right.

  Later today, he’d take a stroll through the city to find the ingredients. He had no idea where to look. But, though Dickie was a man of rigid discipline and routine, he had no fear of the unknown. One can’t be in the army, he’d often declared, if one’s afraid of what might be over the horizon.

  He pulled out the gilt-framed photograph of his wife, taken in the year of her death, and placed it on the bedside table. Whoever had prepared the apartment before he’d arrived had placed fresh chrysanthemums in a vase on the mantelpiece. He took two of the red flowers out of the vase and put one next to the photo and the other on the opposite bedside table.

  Smiling, he said to the photo, “My Edna—me in New York City, eh? Who’d have thought, petal?”

  He felt his bottom lip tremble as he recalled holding his wife’s hand in hospital as she died from cancer.

  Enough of that now, he told himself. You’ve been there already, and you got it out of your system. Edna doesn’t want you getting all poncey again. She’d give you a right slap round the chops and tell you to pull yourself together. And she’d be damn right.

  The suitcase on the bed was still half full and Dickie decided to move it closer to the closet so he could hang the remainder of his clothes. Lifting the case, the old man suddenly felt giddy, his knees buckled, and he and the case crashed to the floor. He shook his head, his teeth gritted. Four minutes later, his head cleared and he managed to get back to his feet while muttering, “Trying to do this at your age. Stupid.”

  More cautiously, he continued unpacking, before taking a bath and dressing in his suit and overcoat. Standing at attention, he picked up the telephone—available for local calls only, its adjacent sign declared—and called the New York Police Department. “My name is Major Dickie Mountjoy, retired. I have traveled to the United States of America to meet the officer in charge of capturing William Cochrane. I’m assuming that officer is based in New York City. I’m here as well. I need you to tell me which police station I need to visit. I have some urgent information about Mr. Cochrane that I must impart to the officer.”

  Painter’s cell phone rang and its screen declared it was a call from her NYPD precinct. “Detective Painter.”

  The precinct captain told her that an old Englishman was in the station waiting area and was refusing to leave until he’d spoken to the detective in charge of capturing Cochrane. “He says he knows Cochrane very well and has information pertinent to the case.”

  “Is he credible?”

  “No idea. He says he wants to tell you something you don’t know. Something that might change your mind about the man you’re hunting. But he’ll only talk to the detective in charge in person. No one else. So that’ll be Kopański or you. I can’t tell you what to do, but it’s a hell of a call to come back and hear what some old guy has to say.”

  While still on the call, Painter relayed this to Kopański.

  Back on the call, she said, “Okay. I’ll get a flight back from Virginia. But, jeez, it’s going to take me hours to get to NYC. Tell him to come back to the station at”—she glanced at her watch—“seven p.m.” She hung up and said to Kopański, “It’s a risk, but I need to hear what this guy has to say.”

  “No problems. I’ll hold the fort down here.”

  It was midafternoon as I entered the city of Lynchburg, Virginia, fifty-six miles northeast of Roanoke.

  I’d walked twenty-nine miles all night, my intention to be anywhere but Roanoke or its surroundings. Crossing countryside and staying away from roads, I’d used stars to navigate my way to the city. Lynchburg had no particular meaning to me beyond that it had a population of seventy-five thousand and would be a place where I could work out what the fuck I was going to do.

  My legs were in agony, as were my shoulders, despite only supporting my small backpack. My stomach felt like it was eating itself because I was so hungry. I had to get food inside me, rest, and get a copy of today’s Washington Post. The chances of me getting caught in the process were significant. Nothing I’d ever done in the past had required such a monumental effort as what I’d had to do to get this far. But I couldn’t go on like this.

  I knew I was at a breaking point.

  My state of mind was dreamlike, and my body felt like it was walking into a force 10 hurricane, when in truth it was consuming the precious reserves left in my torso. Marathon runners call it hitting the wall. I’d hit that wall long ago.

  What kept me moving was my overwhelming concern for Tom. That, and the fact I had his kidnapper’s voice on tape and the license plate numbers of the cars I’d seen in the valley.

  I purchased a copy of the Washington Post from
a store, rubbing my face as I did so. Nearby was a diner. I could smell fried onions, burgers, and bacon. My stomach wrenched, imploring me to go in there and eat. Under normal circumstances, I’d never have taken that risk. But these weren’t normal circumstances. I was slowly dying. All clarity of thought and honed expertise were evaporating fast in favor of one final instinct—to sit down, clasp a mug of hot black coffee, and gorge myself from the menu. That would leave me penniless. Right now, I didn’t care.

  I entered the diner and took a seat at the rear table.

  “What can I get you?” asked the waitress.

  I placed my order, using my fake Virginian accent. “I might also ask for seconds. Been working part of the night and all morning. Timber plantations. Builds up quite the appetite. Keep the coffee coming.”

  “Sure thing.” The waitress frowned. “Think I’ve seen you in here before. You look kinda familiar.”

  I smiled. “Last time I was in here was about a month ago. I’ve been out west on another detail. Am back now. Always love eating here.”

  Three mugs of coffee and two plates of bacon, eggs, hash browns, beans, fries, and steaks inside me, I was indeed now penniless but fully satiated. A condemned man’s last supper, I thought. But it felt simply awesome to sit in the warmth and feel energy returning to my limbs.

  I opened the newspaper to the classifieds and saw another coded message. Using the old encyclopedia, it took me ten minutes to crack the code.

  MY LAST MESSAGE TO YOU. IT’S BEEN FUN. I’M SURE WHAT HAPPENED LAST NIGHT HURTS YOU. AND WHY DID THE EVENT HAPPEN? TO KEEP YOU FREE AND ON THE MOVE. I WANT YOU TO HAVE HOPE THAT YOU CAN RETRIEVE THE PACKAGE. SO, I’M GOING TO GIVE YOU A BIT OF HELP. THE PACKAGE IS IN WASHINGTON D.C. PROVIDING YOU STAY ON THE STREETS ALIVE, THE PACKAGE WILL REMAIN INTACT. DOES THAT MAKE SENSE? DO WE HAVE A DEAL?

  Tom would remain alive if I stayed on the run. That was the deal.

  It was one I had to comply with.

  There were two possible reasons why my tormentor was telling me Tom was in D.C. The first was that it was complete bullshit. Tom wasn’t there and his kidnapper wanted to throw me off the scent. The more likely scenario was he wanted to lure me there. As soon as I was spotted, he’d kill Tom and dump his body in the city. Having us in the same city would remove any doubt as to whether I’d kidnapped him.

  But aside from that, the kidnapper just knew I had to go to D.C.

  I quickly scanned the front-page headline about the massacre at Robert and Celia Grange’s home. The article cited a police briefing this morning wherein crucial new information would be revealed about the crime. The paper said it would publish full details in tomorrow’s edition of what emerged from the briefing. I decided I had to get tomorrow’s paper to read that article.

  All night I’d considered calling the police and giving them the three license plates I’d seen at the Granges’. The problem was, cops probably wouldn’t take the information seriously. But they’d still make a routine check on the vehicle owners. That would spook the shit out of them. The risk to Tom’s life would be severe. I had to find another way to trace the plates.

  I gathered up my things, left the remainder of my cash on the table, stood to leave, and froze.

  The waitress and her manager were at the far end of the diner, standing together behind the counter. Both were looking at me, the waitress with her hand to her mouth, the manager talking fast to her with a look of total concern. The manager stopped talking when he saw me looking at them.

  He raised his hands, eyes wide, and called out, “We’re not going to stop you walking out of here. We mean you no trouble.”

  Other diners in the establishment stopped eating and stared at me. Some started screaming, others shouted.

  “Dear God, that’s him!”

  “That man on the news.”

  “The murderer!”

  “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Let him walk!”

  I moved through the diner slowly, looking at everyone I passed, seeing the terror in their faces as mothers clutched their children and sweethearts hugged each other. A huge trucker was staring at me, no fear in his expression. He had hostility on his face as he pressed his hands against the table as if he was about to launch himself to his feet. No doubt what he was thinking.

  I shook my head and said, “Don’t.”

  I maintained eye contact with the man as I moved past him toward the exit. The momentary sound of exertion behind me was followed a split second later by me spinning around, blocking the trucker’s punch, stepping into the man, placing a foot behind his heel, using the flat of my hand to smash the man’s nose, and punching him in the jaw with sufficient force to lift the three-hundred-pound beast off his feet and force him to crash on the table behind him.

  The man moaned as he clasped his face. And he couldn’t get up.

  Making no attempt to hide my English accent, I shouted to everyone, “I’m going to walk out of here. You don’t touch me, I don’t touch you. And you don’t touch your phones until I’m gone.”

  I turned, walked out of the diner, and sprinted down the street past a row of stores. One minute later I heard sirens.

  The NBC News helicopter was preparing for takeoff, its rotors moving slowly as the pilot made last-minute checks in the cockpit. A cameraman and audio specialist were making sure their equipment was securely fastened to the sides of the hold and doing dummy tests of their transmitter to be certain that anything caught on camera would be relayed to anyone tuning in to the network.

  The only person missing before takeoff was Patty Schmidt, and she was walking fast to the craft, cell phone fixed to her ear as she spoke to her editor. “No doubt it’s him. Virginia’s putting in more cops. Lynchburg’s where this will end. Question is whether he’s going down with a fight.”

  It is always difficult for a woman to enter a high-sided chopper when she’s wearing a skirt suit and heels, but Patty had done this so many times she could clamber on board with the same panache as the numerous times she’d walked onstage to collect journalism prizes garnered during her two decades working for CBS, Fox, CNN, and NBC. And her blond hair, lacquered to the point that it was as solid as rock, was not going to budge despite the downdraft from the aircraft’s blades. Microphone in hand, she looked every inch the consummate pro that she was.

  She gripped a handrail as the craft ascended, shouting to her film crew, “We’ve got the airspace scoop on this. Cops have only allowed NBC in the air above Lynchburg. So let’s not fuck this up. And we may only have one shot. Every possibility that Virginia PD helos tell us to get out of their way.”

  The two men gave her the thumbs-up. Both of them were also seasoned veterans, and between them they’d reported from the sky more than three hundred times.

  The chopper was now moving at speed, its nose tilted down. But this didn’t prompt Patty to sit down and buckle up. Instead, she poked her head into the cockpit. “ETA?”

  The pilot told her forty-five minutes to an hour.

  Her cell phone rang. When the call ended she shouted at the pilot above the craft’s noise, “Gunshots have just been heard in Lynchburg. You better make it no more than thirty minutes!”

  She sat down and nodded at the cameraman. “Let’s get an en route report out.”

  After checking his equipment, the cameraman put three fingers up, two, one, then his thumb.

  “This is Patty Schmidt reporting live from NBC. I’m heading to Lynchburg, Virginia, where I’ve just received reports that wanted fugitive Will Cochrane has been sighted by multiple witnesses. He’s assaulted a man and is now being pursued by police. There are unconfirmed reports of gunfire, though we don’t know whether the weapons fired belong to Cochrane, the police, or a combination. In thirty minutes we’re going to give you a view of the city and the pursuit of Cochrane. Other networks might be on the ground. But only NBC will be your eye in the sky.”

  Edward Carley watched his laptop showing the NBC report as he called Vikto
r Zhukov. “He’s in Lynchburg. I’m assuming you can be there very quickly. Listen very carefully to what I’m about to tell you.”

  I sprinted around a corner into a street in Lynchburg’s inner suburbs. Placing my hands on my knees, I sucked in air before racing up the street. The sirens were drawing closer. There was a bullet hole in my jacket—the result of a cop who’d fired two warning shots at the ground near me, one of the bullets ricocheting off the pavement and penetrating my jacket but missing my flesh.

  As I raced onward, darting down a side street before turning onto a larger suburban road, I desperately hoped I’d lost the cops. Just then a police car tore around a corner and came hurtling toward me. I pulled out one of the Roanoke detectives’ handguns, stepped forward, and fired three rounds into the car’s engine block and front tires, causing it to swerve and judder to a halt.

  The cops leapt out of their vehicle, using their doors as shields as they prepared to return fire. From one hundred yards away, I fired again, smashing the windshield and putting warning shots into the doors, inches from their bodies. I kept my handgun at eye level and trained on the cops as I walked backward. It was my silent warning to them that if they broke cover and tried to gun me down, they’d lose.

  Behind the cover of their vehicle, veteran officers Ken Chen and Simon Carter were focused. The man down the street was walking slowly backward but seemed calm as he kept his pistol pointing at them. In his second volley, he hadn’t hit them, but his first volley had been precise and had made their vehicle obsolete. He knew exactly what he was doing and was prepared to let the officers live. For now.