Divine Justice

CHAPTER 41

THE CHOPPER DROPPED Knox off about thirty miles from the town where Stone had detrained. A truck was waiting for him there. The aircraft had come courtesy of Macklin Hayes, who had sounded heartened over the phone that Knox finally had grabbed hold of a solid lead.

His instructions to Knox had been clear. Locate Carr but do not move in.

"Phone me and I'll take it from there."

I'm sure you will, General.

When Knox pulled into the town he decided he'd better hit the first place that looked promising. His prayers were almost immediately answered. The sign of the One T restaurant loomed ahead. He parked, went in, settled himself at the counter and ordered some food. There weren't many people in the place, but still, Knox figured if Carr had come by to eat after ditching the train someone could remember seeing him. He showed his composite and asked his questions and thirty minutes later he walked out, not knowing much more than when he'd gone in.

Neither the people behind the counter nor the customers were the observant type apparently, or else didn't like to volunteer any information about anybody. All he got in response to the artist's comp were dull shakes of the head. Even the flash of Knox's creds had not helped matters. In fact, it might have hurt. Knox had to keep in mind that around here the federal government was probably only a bit more popular than Osama bin Laden.

There was a bus station, he found, though it was now closed and wouldn't reopen for a while. Apparently folks up here didn't need to travel every day.

Knox sat in his truck and studied his map. The terrain around here was rugged and the towns few and far between with the roads connecting them two-lane and serpentine. He decided to find a place to sleep and start anew in the morning. He would have to come back to the bus station when it reopened. He'd asked around about the people that worked there, but they operated on some sort of circuit basis and wouldn't be back in town for a couple days. Yet Knox was counting on the bus station to pop for him if nothing else turned up in the meantime. There were probably limited ways out of this dump, and a bus was at least one of the more promising ones. Carr might have taken one after losing his ride on the train.

The motel was yellow-painted concrete and crummy, the rates so low they were easily covered by his government per diem. Crackers and a soda constituted room service that he grabbed out of the vending machine outside the tiny office. He showed the artist's comp to the manager but the man shook his head and went back to his TV and can of Bud. Knox spent another hour roaming the streets, showing the picture to passersby and shop owners. Either no one had seen the man or else they wouldn't confess to it.

Knox sat fully clothed on the bed in his room, crunching his miniature cheese and peanut butter sandwiches and sipping his diet Coke. He channel-hopped from wars to natural disasters to corruption scandals to ESPN, NASCAR, and finally settled on the TV Land channel watching, of all things, a decades-old episode of Happy Days.

Carr was the hunted and Knox the hunter. Those were the official roles anyway. In reality those identities could be switched at any time, and with Carr's skill level, the odds that they would reverse at some point were pretty good. And after what he had learned, Knox had quite the misgivings about his exposed rear flank, because there lurked the master of the ambush and blame game, Macklin Hayes.

He pulled out his phone and punched in the number.

"Hello?"

"Melanie, it's Dad."

"Hey, I was just thinking of you. Do you want to get together tomorrow night? I've got center orchestra seats. Wicked is playing."

"I'm sorry, sweetie, I can't. I'm out of town."

"Where are you? Paris? Amsterdam? Kabul? Tikrit?" Her tone sounded light and upbeat, but Knox knew his daughter well enough to sense the anxiety behind the casual words.

"I'm a little west of you. And a little rural."

"Terrorists hiding out in the hollers, Dad?"

"You never know, honey. Have you heard from your brother lately?"

"I got an e-mail from him this morning. He sounds good. He sent some pictures. There was some bad news, though. His deployment was supposed to be up in four weeks but they just got notice of extension for another six months. Apparently the Taliban is really coming back with a vengeance. Mark said they're pulling twenty thousand troops from Iraq to send to Afghanistan and he might end up there."

Knox swore under his breath. "I know he can't say exactly where he is, but is he in the line of fire at his current position?"

"He only said he was keeping his head down and trying to do his job."

Knox slumped back on the bed. "Look, what do you say we all plan to do something together when he gets back? Go away somewhere. Maybe the Mediterranean. Just the three of us. Wind down and take a breather. My dime."

"That sounds great. But the Med is expensive and I probably make more money than you. How about I chip in too? Mark's the poor one. Serving his country doesn't even get him minimum wage."

"Nope, my dime. And you need to save your dollars."

"Why?"

"To take care of me in my old age. I won't be doing this crap forever."

There was a change in his tone when he said this and his daughter was quick to pick up on it.

"Dad, is everything okay?"

"Fine, sweetie. And a piece of advice, you don't waste premium theater tickets on old farts like me. You get a nice young man to join you in seeing Wicked. I want grandchildren, okay? I'm not getting any younger here."

"Okay, sure."

"I'll talk to you soon, honey."

"Good-bye, Dad. And… take care of yourself."

"Always."

"Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you sure you're okay?"

Knox didn't want to hesitate, but for some reason he did. "Everything will be fine, Mel."

Knox clicked off and dropped the phone on the bed. Now he felt worse than he did before he'd called. He knew he'd frightened his daughter and there was nothing he could do about it now. Maybe he wanted to scare her. Or at least prepare her for when he didn't come back home, or even for when she might have to come and ID his body.

He looked around the dismal interior of his room. How many crappy hole-in-the-walls, how many effed-up towns, how many shitty countries had he spent the majority of his life in? The answer was clear: way too many.

He lay back on the bed feeling lonelier than he ever had.

Wicked? Yeah, I can tell you all about wicked, honey. But then I'm afraid you'd hate your old man, and I'd rather eat a machine-gun round.

His cell phone buzzed.

It was Hayes. He knew without even looking. He didn't want to answer it but he had to. Official protocol, meaning he didn't want to be transferred to undercover duty in, say, Tehran or Pyongyang.

"Joe Knox."

Hayes snapped, "Where are you?"

"On the hunt."

"On the hunt precisely where?"

" Southwest Virginia."

"That's not precise enough."

"To tell you the truth, I'm not even sure where I am and the reception up here is lousy, sir, I can barely hear you."

Hayes raised his voice a few notches. "Have you sighted him yet?"

"If I had I would've already called you. I'm just trying to run some leads down and get a more pinpoint location."

"Why didn't you have the chopper take you all the way in?"

Because then you'd know exactly where I was. "A bird dropping a fed in the middle of this place would've aroused a little bit of suspicion. If Carr was around he wouldn't have been much longer. I'm going to poke around and then get back to you."

"I'm not exactly on board with how you're handling this, Knox."

"Flying by the seat of my pants, sir. Doing the best I can, what with all the prohibitions on what I can look at or the roads I can go down."

"The minute you know anything, Knox. The very minute!" He clicked off.

Knox looked up in time to see the Fonz deliver his trademark line on TV.

"Sit on it, asshole," Knox said in his best Arthur Fonzarelli voice.