Joe Ledger: Special Ops

NOTE: This story takes place several weeks after the events in Patient Zero.

Chap. 1

Chap. 2

“God—please! They’re killing me here. You got to get me out of this. Jesus Christ, you said this wouldn’t happen.”

I leaned forward to listen to the voice. Even with the distortion of a bad digital file I could hear the raw terror, the urgency.

“When did this come in?” I asked.

My boss, Mr. Church, sat on the other side of the conference table. He was neatly dressed, the knot of his tie perfect, his face impassive. But I wasn’t fooled. This had to be hitting him every bit as hard as it was me.

“That’s the problem,” he said. “This message is three days old.”

“Three days? How the hell…?”

Church held up a hand.

I paused, dialing it down a notch. “How did this get missed? Burke’s handler should have called us right away.”

“The handler didn’t get this until this morning.”

“Then how…?”

“This message was left on the home phone of the Special Agent in Charge.”

He let that float in the air for a moment.

“Wait,” I said, “home phone?”

“Yes,” said Church, “and isn’t that interesting. Simon Burke would have no way of knowing who the AIC was, let alone have access to his home number.”

“Did the handler get a call?”

Church opened a folder and slid it across the table toward me. “These are the phone records for the handler, Dykstra. The top page is the direct line to Burke’s safe house. The next pages are Dykstra’s cell and home numbers. The previous call from Burke was the routine check-in last week. Nothing since then. Nothing from a pay phone or from any other line that Burke could have used.”

“The handler’s cell….”

“No,” said Church. “There is no identifiable incoming call on any line associated with the AIC or the handler that could have resulted in that message.”

I frowned. “I don’t understand. If Burke left a message then there has to be a record.”

Church said nothing. He selected a vanilla wafer from a plate of cookies which sat between us on the table. He nibbled off a piece and munched it thoughtfully, his eyes never leaving my face.

I said, “Then someone got to the records. Altered them.”

“Mm. Difficult, but possible.”

“Or…they have a way to erase their tracks, remove all traces of the call.”

“Also possible, but….”

“…even more difficult,” I finished.

He said nothing. He didn’t have to. There were very few computer systems in the world capable of the kind of thorough hacking we were discussing; and even then there was only one computer that couldn’t be fooled by any of the others and that was MindReader. That was our computer. It was a freak among computers, designed to be a ghost, to intrude into any other system and then rewrite its memory so that there was absolutely no footprint. All other computers left a bit of a scar on the hard drive. Not MindReader. And Church guarded that system like a dragon. Not even the President had access to it without Church personally signing him in.

“Okay,” I said, “could someone have gotten to the answering machine directly and recorded a message onto it from the AIC’s house?”

“No. Dykstra uses a service provided by AT&T, and the messages are stored on their server. If the call was made from Dykstra’s home phone, there would be a record of that.”

“And there isn’t.”

“No.”

I reached over and took an Oreo from the plate. I can’t come up with any good reason why a sane person would bother with vanilla wafers when the chocolaty goodness of Oreos was right there. It added to my growing suspicion that Church was a Vulcan.

“Who’s looking for Burke?”

“The FBI has been looking for him since nine this morning. Except for us, no one else is in the loop.”

“Local law?”

“They are definitely out of the loop. There have been some concerns about the police department, though admittedly that was under previous management. The current chief has no strikes against him, but otherwise he’s an unknown quantity. This matter was deemed too sensitive to be shared with him.”

“Even now?”

Church pursed his lips. “Only with direct supervision.”

“Which doesn’t mean the FBI.”

“No.” Church ate more of his cookie. “We’ve backtracked to a few hours before the call was left on Dykstra’s voicemail, and nothing. Burke has not used a credit card or made transactions of any kind under his own name. His car is still parked in his garage.”

I sighed. “I’m not liking the spin on this one, Boss. Burke’s not a player. He might know in theory how to stay off the grid, but I can’t see him managing it without making a mistake. Not for this long, not without help.”

“Doubtful. And there’s one more thing.”

I waited, knowing that Church would save the kicker for last.

“Burke’s clever. His whole life is built around creating plots that his readers won’t see coming. Apparently he’s used this same gift against his handler. We hacked the confidential reports between the handler and the AIC, and Burke’s gone missing four times previously. Not for long, a matter of a few hours each time. The handler eventually realized that Burke was using a bicycle to get into town or out of town via one of the two bridges. I had Bug do computer pattern sweeps on commerce records of stores within bicycle distance of the safe house. We’ve been able to establish that on the dates in question, and inside the window of time, there were purchases of six disposable cell phones. Burke has been making calls.”

“Who’s he calling?”

“Add this to the equation,” Church said. “Interest in Burke and his unstoppable novel plot has increased substantially in the weeks following those purchases.”

“Well, that’s interesting as hell.”

“Isn’t it, though?”

“You think he’s trying to sell it?”

“We have to be open to that possibility.”

What Church didn’t say out loud was: In which case Burke becomes a National Security liability.

“We need to put this idiot in a bag,” I said. “But we can’t put out an APB. That would draw every shooter east of the Mississippi.”

“Likely it would draw shooters from around the globe,” said Church. “A dozen countries come to mind.”

“What if he’s already dead?”

He looked at me. Church wears tinted glasses that make it tough to read his expression. “Is that what you think?”

I thought about it, and shook my head. “No. Considering how important Burke is, a pro would either be under orders to get him out of the country or get him to one of their safe houses. Or they’d want him splashed all over the headlines. Either way, the odds on him seizing the opportunity to leave a message are pretty slim.”

“Agreed.” Church took another cookie. Another vanilla wafer. Weird.

I nodded to the recorder on the table. “Play it again.”

“This is Simon Burke…look, you jokers said you’d protect me. They’re going to tear me apart. Look…I don’t have much time…this is really hard. You got to do something. God — please! They’re killing me here. You got to get me out of this. Jesus Christ, you said this wouldn’t happen.”

He played it three times more. It sounded just as bad each time, and Burke sounded just as terrified. I rubbed my eyes and stood up.

“He sounds genuinely scared,” I said. “And outraged. I can’t see him making that call after he’s contacted potential buyers. It would make more sense for him to do that as a result of getting no action on this kind of a cry for help.”

“Agreed. Which means we are short on answers, and time is not our friend.”

“Then I guess I’d better get my boys and get gone.”

“Sergeant Dietrich is prepping a helo,” said Church. He cocked his head at me. “Have you ever been to that town?”

“Pine Deep? Sure, but way back when I was a kid. My dad took me and my brother to the big Halloween Festival they used to have. That was before the trouble, of course.”

The trouble.

Funny little word for something that stands as one of the worst disasters in U.S. history. More than eleven thousand dead in what has been officially referred to as an act of terrorism and insurrection by a domestic terrorist cell formed by members of a local white-supremacist organization. The terrorists dumped a lot of LSD into the town’s drinking water. Had everyone convinced that half the town was turning into monsters.

“Terrible tragedy,” said Church.

“I saw the movie they did on it,” I said. “Hellnight, I think it was called. Hollywood turned it into a horror picture. Vampires and ghosts and werewolves, oh my.”

Church chewed his cookie. “There was a lot of confusion surrounding the incidents. The official report labeled it domestic terrorism.”

I caught the slight emphasis he put on the word official. “Why, was there something else going on?”

He very nearly smiled.

“Have a safe trip, Captain Ledger.”

Chap. 3

The chopper put us down at a private airfield near Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and a couple of DMS techs had a car waiting for us. It looked like a two-year-old black Ford Explorer, but we had the full James Bond kit. Well, I guess it’s more the Jack Bauer kit. No oil slicks or changeable license plates. Mostly we had guns. Lots and lots of guns. The back bay was a gun closet with everything from Glock nines to Colt M4 carbines fitted with Aimpoint red-dot sights. And enough ammunition to wage a moderately enthusiastic war.

Bunny whistled as he opened all the drawers and compartments. “And to think I asked for a puppy for Christmas.”

“For when you care enough to send the very best,” he said, hefting a Daewoo USAS-12 automatic shotgun. “I think I’ll call her ‘Missy.’”

“Freak,” muttered Top Sims under his breath. First Sergeant Bradley Sims — Top to everyone — was a career noncom who had been in uniform nearly as long as Bunny had been alive, but for all that he’d never cultivated the testosterone-driven shtick of idolizing weapons. To him they were tools and nothing more. He respected them, and he handled them with superior professional skill, but he wasn’t in love with them.

Bunny — Harvey Rabbit, according to his birth certificate — looked dreamy-eyed, like a man going courting.

They were the only two members of Echo Team left standing after our last couple of missions. We had more guys in training, but Top and Bunny were on deck and ready to roll when this Burke thing came at us. Like me, they were dressed in civilian clothes. Jeans, Hawaiian shirts. Top wore Nu-Balance cross-trainers that looked like they’d been spit-polished; Bunny had a well-worn pair of Timberlands.

I said, “Concealed small arms. We’re here on a search and rescue. We’re not declaring war on rural Pennsylvania.”

Bunny looked hurt. “Damn, and here I thought it was redneck season.”

Even Top grinned at that.

I looked at my watch. “Saddle up. We’re burning daylight.”

Even as I said it I heard a rumble of thunder and glanced up. The sky above was bright and blue and cloudless, but there were storm clouds gathering in the northeast. Probably ten miles from where we were, which put the clouds over or near Pine Deep. Swell. Nothing helps a manhunt better than fricking rain.

We climbed into the SUV, buckled up for safety, and headed out, taking Route 202 north and then cutting onto the snaking black ribbon that was State Alternate Route A-32. Top drove, Bunny crammed his six-and-a-half-foot bulk into the back, and I took the shotgun seat.

“So why’s this Burke guy so important?” asked Bunny. “And since when do we screw around with Witness Protection?”

“Not exactly what this is,” I said. “Simon Burke is a writer and—”

“I read his books,” said Top. “Bit weird. Little paranoid.”

I nodded. “He writes thrillers, and since the middle nineties he’s built a rep for ultrabelievable terrorist plots.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Bunny, nodding. “I saw the movie they made out of one of those books. The one about terrorists introducing irradiated fleas into the sheepdogs in cattle country. Jon Stewart had him on and kind of fried the guy because a couple of meatheads actually tried to do the flea thing. Burke kept saying, ‘how is that my problem?’”

“That’s the story in a nutshell,” I said. “Burke’s plots have always been way too practical, and he likes showing off by providing useful detail. There’s a fine line between a detailed thriller and a primer for terrorists.”

“Hooah,” murmured Top. That was Army Ranger-speak for everything from “I agree” to “Get stuffed.”

“Well, early last year Burke was doing the talk show circuit to promote his new book—”

“—A Predator Species,” supplied Top. “Read it. Give it four stars out of five.”

“—and Conan O’Brien asks him about his plots. Burke, who’s a bit of a jackass at the best of times, according to what I’ve been told and the interview transcripts I’ve read, starts bragging about the fact that he has a plot that is so good, so perfect that his contacts with Homeland ‘strongly requested’ him not to publish it.”

“We know who that was in Homeland?” Bunny snorted.

“It wasn’t Homeland,” I said, “it was Hugo Vox, the guy who does all the screening for people getting top secret and above clearance. He ran the plot out at that counterterrorism training center he has in Colorado. Terror Town. Teams ran it six times, and Vox said that the best-case scenario was a forty percent kill of the U.S. population. Low-tech, too. Anyone could make it work.”

“Jeeeez-us,” said Bunny.

“What was it?” asked Top, intrigued.

I told them. Top gave a long, low whistle. Bunny’s grin diminished in wattage.

They considered it, shaking their heads as the logic of it unfolded in their imaginations. “Damn,” Bunny said, “that’s smart.”

“It’s damn stupid,” countered Top. “Putting that in bookstores would be like handing out M16s at a terrorism convention.”

“It was stupid for Burke to talk about it on Conan,” I said. “Luckily he didn’t actually describe the plot on TV. Just enough to give the impression he really had something. You can probably guess what happened,” I said.

Top made a face. “Someone made a run at him?”

I nodded. “Within a day of doing the show he was nearly kidnapped twice. He must have realized his mistake and went straight to his lawyer, who in turned called the FBI, who called Homeland, who called us.”

“And we did what?” asked Bunny. “Put a bag over him?”

“More or less. This is before we came on the DMS,” I said, “so I’m getting this second hand from Church. I drew this gig because I know Burke. Or, used to. He did ridealongs with me and a couple other cops when I was with Baltimore PD. Bottom line is that Burke was set up in Pine Deep as a retired school teacher and widower. His handler’s cover is that of ‘nephew’ who lives one town away. Place called Black Marsh, right over the river in New Jersey.”

“So it’s just protective custody?”

“No. Homeland is cooking up some kind of scam thing where they’ll eventually use Burke as bait to lure the cockroaches out of the woodwork. Get them to make a run at him so we could scoop them up, take them off for some quiet conversation, say at Gitmo.”

“Well…that’s pretty much what just happened, isn’t it?” asked Top.

“I guess…but it wasn’t on a timetable. They wanted Burke completely off the radar for a year or so to let things cool down. Homeland wanted to scoop up high-profile hitters, not bozos with suicide vests. The plan was to start seeding the spy network with disinformation this fall that Burke was willing to sell his idea for the right kind of money. Let that cook on the international scene for a bit then set up a meet with as many buyers as we can line up. Then do a series of snatch-and-grabs. It’s the kind of assembly-line arrests Homeland’s been doing since 9-11. Doesn’t put all their eggs in one basket, so even if they put four out of twenty potential buyers in the bag they celebrate it as a major win. And, I guess it is.”

Top nodded. “So what went wrong, Cap’n?”

“He disappeared.”

“Disappeared? Did he walk or was he taken?”

“I guess that’s what we’re here to find out.” I told them the rest, about Burke going AWOL a few times; and about the cell phones and the buzz overseas.

“Are we trying to find him and keep him safe,” asked Top, “or put a bullet in his brainpan. ’Cause I can build a case either way.”

I didn’t answer.

We’d caught up with the storm clouds, and the closer we got to Pine Deep the gloomier it got. I know it was coincidence, but I could live without subtle jokes like that from the universe. Luckily the rain seemed to be holding off.

We passed through the small town of Crestville, following the road so that we’d enter Pine Deep via a rickety bridge from the north. Both sides of the road were lined with cornfields. It was the middle of August and the corn was tall and green and impenetrable. Here and there we saw old signs, faded and crumbling, that once advertised a Haunted Hayride and a Halloween Festival.

As we crossed the bridge Top tapped my shoulder and nodded to a big wooden sign almost completely faded by hard summers and harder winters. It read:

Somebody had used red spray paint to overlay the writing with a smiley face, complete with vampire fangs.

“Charming,” I said.

We drove down another crooked road that broadened onto a feeder side street, then made the turn onto Main Street. The town of Pine Deep looked schizophrenic. Almost half of the buildings were brand-new, with glossy window displays and bright LED signs; and the other half looked at least fifty years old and in need of basic repair. Some of the buildings had been burned and painted over, and that squared with what I’d read about the place. Before the trouble, Pine Deep had been an upscale arts community built on the bones of a centuries-old blue-collar farming region. Even now, with its struggle to create a new identity, there were glimpses of those earlier eras. Like ghosts, glimpses out of the corner of the eye. But the overall impression was of a town that had failed. It wasn’t dead, but it wasn’t quite alive either. Maybe the economic downturn had come at the wrong time, derailing the reconstruction of the town and the rebuilding of its economy. Or, maybe the memory of all those dead people, all that pain from the trouble infected the atmosphere.

“Damn,” murmured Bunny. “They could film a Stephen King flick here. Wouldn’t need special effects.”

“Town’s trying to make a comeback,” I said.

Top’s face was set, his brows furrowed. Unlike Bunny and me, Top had read a couple of the books written about the town and its troubles. He shook his head. “Some things you don’t come back from.”

“That’s cheery,” said Bunny.

Top nodded to one of the buildings that still showed traces of the fire that had nearly destroyed Pine Deep. “That wasn’t the first problem this place had. Even when I was a kid Newsweek was calling this place the ‘most haunted town in America.’ Had that reputation going back to Colonial times.”

“Since when do you believe in ghosts?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. Instead he said, “Places can be like people. Some are born good, some are born bad. This one’s like that. Born bad, and bad to the bone.”

Bunny opened his mouth to make a joke, but he left it unsaid.

We drove in silence for a while.

Finally Top seemed to shake off some of his gloom. “We going to check in with the local police? If so, what badge do we flash?”

“That’s where we’re heading now,” I said, as I pulled into a slanted curbside parking slot. “The FBI has been the public face of this kind of witness protection, but Federal Marshals are also involved. We’re both. I’m FBI, you guys are marshals.”

They nodded and Top dug out the appropriate I.D.s from a locked compartment. We have fully authentic identification for most of the major investigative and enforcement branches of the U.S. government. The only I.D.s we don’t have are DMS cards and badges, because the DMS doesn’t issue any. We only exist as far as the President and one congressional subcommittee is concerned.

We got out and headed toward the small office marked PINE DEEP POLICE DEPARTMENT. There were potted plants on either side of the door, but both plants were withered and dead.

Chap. 4

There were three people in the office. A small, pigeon-breasted woman with horn-rims and blue hair who sat at a combination desk and dispatch console. She didn’t even look up as the doorbell tinkled.

The two men did.

They were completely unalike in every way. The younger man, a patrol officer with corporal’s stripes, was at a desk. Early twenties, but he was a moose. Not as big as Bunny — and there are relatives of Godzilla who aren’t as big as Bunny — but big enough. Six four, two-twenty and change. The kind of muscles you get from hard work and free weights. Callused hands, lots of facial scars. A fighter for sure. He had curly red hair and contact lenses that gave him weirdly luminous blue eyes. Almost purple. Odd cosmetic choice for a cop. Little triangular plaque on his desk read: CORPORAL MICHAEL SWEENEY.

He remained seated, but the other man rose as we entered. He was about fifty, but he had a lean build that hadn’t yielded to middle-age spread. Short, slender, with intensely black hair threaded with silver. He, too, had visible scars, and it was no stretch to guess that they’d gotten them during the Trouble. And, strangely, there was also something familiar about him. I felt like I’d met him somewhere…or heard something about him…. Whatever it was, the memory was way, way back on a dusty shelf where I couldn’t reach it.

The older man wore Chief’s bars and a smile that looked warm and cheerful and was entirely fabricated. He leaned on the intake desk. “What can I do for you fellows?”

I flashed the FBI badge. “Special Agent Morrison,” I said. The name on the card was Marion Morrison. John Wayne’s real name.

His smile didn’t flicker. I also noticed that it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “And your fishing buddies there?”

They held up I.D. cases, too, but I introduced them. “Federal Deputy Marshals Cassidy and Reid.” Full names on the IDs were William Cassidy and John Reid. Hopalong Cassidy and the Lone Ranger. The guy at the DMS who does our IDs needs a long vacation.

“Malcolm Crow,” said the smaller man. “Pine Deep Chief of Police.”

He offered his hand, which was small and hard, and we shook.

“So…again, what can I do for you?” he asked.

“Missing persons case,” I said. “Confidential and high-profile.”

“Which means what? A special agent and two marshals? This a manhunt for a suspected terrorist or a missing witness?”

I shrugged, hoping he’d take that as a ‘we’re not supposed to talk about it’ kind of thing. He ignored it.

“Can’t help you if you won’t share,” he said.

I said nothing, giving him ‘the look.’ It usually makes people squirm. Chief Crow merely smiled his veneer of a smile and waited me out.

“Okay,” I said, as if answering his question was the hardest thing I was ever going to be asked to do, “I can tell you this much. We had a protected witness living in Pine Deep. He’s missing.”

“Living here under what name?”

“Peter Wagner.”

“Ah.”

“Ah…what?”

“The writer.”

I stepped closer to the intake bench. “And how would you know that?”

Behind Crow, Officer Sweeney stood up. He did it slowly, without threat, but there was still a lot of threat there. Unlike the chief, Sweeney’s face was unsmiling. A good-looking kid, but one that you’d take note of, especially if he wasn’t in uniform and you were both alone. Behind me I heard the soft scuff as Top and Bunny made subtle moves. Shifting weight, being ready.

Crow seemed amused by all of this. To me he said, “You take a guy as famous as Simon Burke, give him a bad dye job and color contacts, and you expect no one to recognize him? People in small towns do read, you know. And your boy is famous.”

“Who else knows who he is?”

“Most people with two eyes and an IQ.”

Crap.

“For what it’s worth,” said Crow, “people hereabouts know how to keep a secret.” As if on cue the thunder rumbled. It made Crow smile more. “Can I ask why a bestselling novelist is in witness protection?”

“National security.”

“Ri-i-ght,” he said in exactly the way you’d say “bullshit.”

“Do you know where he is?” I asked. “Has he come forward and—”

“No,” Crow said, cutting me off. “I don’t know where he is, but I suspect he’s in some real trouble.”

“Why do you suspect that, Chief Crow?”

He shrugged. “Because you’re here. If he was out sowing some wild oats or getting hammered down at the Scarecrow Lounge, his handler would be on it. Or at most he’d get a couple of kids right out of Quantico to help with the scut work. Instead they send you three.”

“We are the team sent to locate our witness.”

“Ri-i-i-ght,” he said again, stretching out the “I.”

“Would you like to see our credentials again?” This guy was beginning to irritate the crap out of me.

“Look,” said Crow, leaning a few inches forward on his forearms. I could see the network of scars on his face. “You’re about as close to a standard paper-pushing FBI agent as I am to Megan Fox. You’re a hunter, and so are your pals. I don’t care what the IDs say, because you’re probably NSA at the least, in which case the IDs are as real as you need them to be and I’m Joe Nobody from Nowhere, Pennsylvania. But here’s a news flash. Just about nothing happens in a small town without everybody hearing something. Our gossip-train is faster than a speeding bullet. If you want to find your missing witness, then you can do it the easy way, which is with my help; or the hard way, which is without my help.”

I had to fight to keep a smile off my face. Guy had balls, I’ll give him that much. The big red-haired kid was hovering a few feet behind him, looking borderline spooky with his fake blue eyes and unsmiling face.

“What do you suggest, Chief?”

Crow nodded. “Cut me in on the hunt. Give me some details, and I’ll see what I can find.”

I considered it. Thunder rumbled again, and the sky outside was turning gray. My instincts were telling me one thing and DMS protocol was telling me something else. In the end, I said, “Thanks anyway, Chief. If it’s all the same to you, we’ll poke around on our own. I doubt the witness is in any real trouble. Not in a little town like this.”

I meant it as a kick in the shins, but he merely shook his head. “You read up on Pine Deep before you came here, Agent Duke? I mean…Agent Morrison.”

Touché, you little jerk, I thought.

“Some,” I said.

“About the troubles we had a few years back?”

“Everyone knows about them?”

“Well,” he said, shifting a little. He glanced back at the redheaded kid and then at me. “Those problems were here long before we had our ‘troubles.’ I guess you could say that in one way or another we’ve always had troubles here in Pine Deep. Lots of people run into real problems here.”

I smiled now, and it probably wasn’t my nicest one. “Are…you trying to threaten me, Chief Crow?”

He laughed.

Behind him the redhead kid, Sweeney, spoke for the first time. “Just a fair warning, mister,” he said. His voice was low and raspy. “It ain’t the people you have to worry about around here. The town will help you or it won’t.”

Then he smiled and it was one of the coldest, least human smiles I think I’ve ever seen. It was like an animal, a wolf or something equally predatory, trying to imitate a human smile.

Then Officer Sweeney turned away and sat back down at his desk.

Chief Crow winked at us. “Happy trails, boys.”

I stared at him for a few moments as thunder rattled the windows in the tiny office. Then I nodded and turned to go. Just as Bunny opened the door for me, Crow said, “Welcome to Pine Deep.”

I turned and met his eyes for a few long seconds. He neither blinked nor looked away. For reasons I can’t adequately explain, we nodded to one another, and then I followed Top and Bunny out of the office. As we walked to the car, I could feel eyes watching me.

Chap. 5

We got back in the car.

“Okay,” said Bunny, “that was freaking weird.”

No one argued.

“Want me to run him through MindReader?” asked Top.

“Yeah,” I said. “I know him from somewhere.”

“Cop thing?” asked Bunny. “You do a shared-jurisdiction gig with Pine Deep?”

“No.”

“Something social? FOP weenie roast.”

“Cute. But no. I don’t think I’ve met him, but there’s something banging around in the back of my brain about him. Crow. Could be a martial arts thing.”

“He train?” asked Bunny.

“Yes,” Top and I said together.

Top added, “Not karate, though. No calluses on his knuckles.”

“Has them on his hands, though,” I said, touching the webbing around my thumb and index finger. I had a ring of callus there, too. “Kenjutsu, or something similar.”

“Kid uses his knuckles, though,” Top said. “Hard-looking son of a bitch. Looks like he could go a round or two.”

A few fat raindrops splatted on the windshield, and the glass was starting to fog. I hit defrost and waited while Bunny called the request in to Bug, our computer guru at the Warehouse. Bug did a search through MindReader and got back to us before we’d driven two blocks.

“Plenty of stuff here,” he said. “Malcolm Crow grew up in Pine Deep. Medical records from when he was a kid show a lot of injuries. Broken arms, facial injuries…stuff consistent with physical abuse.”

“Anyone charged for that?”

“No. His mother died when he was little. He and his brother were raised by his father, who has a loooong record of arrests for public drunkenness, DUI, couple of barroom brawls. Sounds like he was the hitter. Wow…get this. His brother was murdered by a serial killer thirty-five years ago. Your boy was the only witness. Couple dozen victims total before the killer went off the radar. Possibly lynched by the townies, and the local police may have been involved in that.”

“Lovely little town,” Top said under his breath.

“Chief Crow was a cop for a while,” Bug continued. “Then was a drunk for a long time. He sobered up and opened up a craft and novelty store, and helped design a haunted hayride for a Halloween theme park. All of this was before that trouble they had there. Crow was deputized by the mayor about a month before the Trouble, and — here’s another cool bit — the deputation was because another serial killer was in town killing people. Thirty years to the day from when Crow’s brother was killed. Freaky.”

“Damn,” I said. “What else you got?”

“He’s married. Wife is Val Guthrie-Crow. Hyphenates her last name. And they have two kids. One natural — Sara — and one adopted, Mike.”

“Mike? What was his birth name?”

“Same as he’s using now. Michael Sweeney. Never changed it.”

“What else?”

“Crow, his wife, and Mike Sweeney were all hospitalized after the trouble. Various injuries. Their statements say that they don’t remember what happened and they claimed everything was a blur,” Bug said. “That more or less fits because the town water supply was supposed to be spiked with LSD and other party favors.”

“Do we have anything linking Crow to the Trouble itself? Any involvement with white supremacist movements, anything at all?”

“No. Couple other guys on the Pine Deep police force might have been involved, though, including the chief at that time.”

“But nothing that would connect Crow to it?”

“Nothing.”

“What are his politics?”

“Moderate with a tilt to the left. Same for the missus.”

“And Sweeney?”

“Registered independent but has never voted. Oh…hold on. Got a red flag here. Looks like Sweeney’s adopted father — another asshole who liked to hit kids if I’m reading this right — was one of the men suspected of orchestrating the attack on the town.”

“What about the kid?”

“I hacked the Pine Deep P.D. files and it looks like the stepfather filed a report for assault. The kid decked him and ran away.”

I glanced at Top. “You read the kid as a bad guy?”

He shook his head, then nodded, then shrugged. “I really couldn’t get a read on him, Cap’n.”

I thanked Bug and told him to call us if he got anything else.

“So, what d’you think, Boss?” asked Bunny. “Crow one of the good guys or one of the bad guys?”

“No way to tell. We’re not even sure we have any bad guys in this. Burke could be shacked up with some chick.”

“And doing what?” asked Top. “Making crank calls to the AIC?”

“And terrorists?” added Bunny.

I grinned. “Yeah, yeah.”

We drove through the town, which takes less time than it does to tell it. Couple of stoplights. Rows of craft shops. A surprising number of cafes and bars, though most of them looked run down. More for drinking than eating, I thought. The biggest intersection had the Terrance Wolfe Memorial Medical Center across the street from the Saul Weinstock Ball Field. The hospital looked new; the ball field was overgrown, and a hundred crows huddled in a row along the chain link fence. Ditto for the hospital.

I noted it away and kept driving. The place was starting to get to me, and that was weird because I worked a lot of shifts in West Baltimore, which is probably the most depressing place on earth. Poverty screamed at you from every street corner, and there was a tragic blend of desperation and hopelessness in the eyes of every child. And yet, this little town had a darker tone to it, and my overactive imagination wondered if the storm clouds ever let the sun shine down. Looking at these streets was like watching the sluggish flow of a polluted river. You know that there’s life beneath the grime and the toxicity, but at the same time you feel that life could not exist there.

We left town and turned back onto Route A-32 as it plunged south toward the Delaware River. This was the large part of the township, occupied for the first mile by new suburban infill — with cookie-cutter development units, many still under construction, and overbuilt McMansions. More than three quarters of the houses had FOR SALE signs staked into the lawns. A few were unfinished skeletons draped in tarps that looked like body bags.

Then we were out into the farm country and the atmosphere changed subtly, from something dying to something still clinging to life. Big farms, too, like the kind you expect to see more in the Midwest. Thousands of acres of land, miles between houses. Endless rows of waving green corn, fields bright with pumpkins, and row upon row of vegetables. A paint-faded yellow tractor chugged along the side of the road, driven by an ancient man in blue coveralls. He smoked a cheap pipe that he took out of his mouth to salute us as we went by.

“We just drive into the nineteen forties?” asked Bunny.

“Pretty much.”

Mist, as thick and white as tear gas, slowly boiled up from gullies and hollows as the cooler air under the storm mixed with the August heat.

The GPS told us that we were coming up on our turn.

The lane onto which I’d turned ran straight as a rifle barrel from the road, through a fence of rough-cute rails, to the front door of a Cape Cod that looked as out of place here in Pine Deep as a sequined thong looks on a nun. Heavy oaks lined the road, and the big front lawn was dark with thick, cool summer grass.

“Okay, gentlemen,” I said softly. “Place should be empty, and except for a brief walk-through by the handler, no one else will have disturbed the crime scene.”

“Wait,” said Top, “you want Farmboy and me to play Sherlock Holmes?”

“We’re just doing a cursory examination. If we find anything of substance we’ll ship it off.”

“To where? CSI: Twilight Zone?”

I rolled the car to a slow stop in a turnaround in front of the house. The garage was detached except for a pitched roof that connected it to the main house. A five-year-old Honda Civic was parked in that slot. The garage door was closed.

“Looks nice and quiet,” Bunny said as he got out, the big shotgun in his hands.

We split up. Bunny and Top circled around to the back and side entrances. I took the front door. We had our earbuds in place, everyone tuned into the team channel.

“On two,” I said. I counted down and then kicked the door.

The door whipped inward with a crack, and as I entered, gun up and out in a two-handed shooter’s grip, I heard the back door bang open, and then the side door that connected to the garage breezeway. We were moving fast, yelling at the top of our voices — at whoever might be in the house and at each other as we cleared room after room.

Then it was quiet again as we drifted together in the living room, holstering our guns and exhaling slowly. No one felt the need to comment on the fact that the place was empty. It was now our job to determine how it came to be empty.

“You take the bedrooms,” I said to Bunny. “Observe before you touch.”

He was a professional soldier, not a cop. There were no smartass remarks when being given straight orders that could remind him how to do his job.

“Why don’t I take the garage and around the outside?” asked Top, and off he went.

I stood alone in the living room and waited for the crime scene to tell me its story. If, indeed, it was a crime scene.

The doors and windows were properly closed and locked from inside. I’d had to kick the door, and a quick examination showed that the deadbolt had been engaged. Same went for the side and back doors. I went upstairs and checked those windows. Locked. Cellar door was locked and the windows were block glass.

Back in the living room I saw a laptop case by the couch, and one of those padded lap tables. The case was empty. The power cable and mouse were there, but the machine itself was gone.

Significant.

The question was…was Simon Burke crazy enough to actually write his novel about the unstoppable terrorist plot?

I hadn’t met him, but I had read his psych evaluations. He had that dangerous blend of overblown ego and deep insecurity that creates a person who feels that any idea he has is of world-shaking importance and must therefore be shared with the whole world. They typically lack perspective, and everything I’d read in Burke’s case file told me that he was one of those. Probably not a bad person, but not the kind you’d want to be caught in a stalled elevator with. Only one of you would walk out alive.

So…where was he?

My cell rang, and I flipped it open. The screen read UNKNOWN CALLER.

That’s…pretty unsettling. Our phone system is run through MindReader, which is wired in everywhere. There are no callers unknown to MindReader.

It kept ringing. Before I answered it I pulled a little doohickey the size of a matchbox from a pocket, unspooled its wire, plugged the lead into the phone and pressed the CONNECT button. MindReader would race down the phone lines in a millisecond and begin reading the computer and sim card in the other phone. One of Mr. Sin’s toys. He did not like surprises.

It rang a third time and I punched the button.

“Hello?”

“Joe?”

“Who’s calling, please?”

“Joe? Is this Joe Ledger?”

“Sir, please identify yourself.”

“It’s me, Joe.”

“Who?” Though I thought I already knew.

“Simon Burke.” He paused and gave a nervous little laugh. “Guess you’ve been looking for me.”

“Where are you, Mr. Burke?”

“C’mon, Joe, cut the ‘Mister’ stuff. Mr. Burke was my dad, and he was kind of a dick.”

I looked through the window at the white fog swirling from the cornfields. It was so thick you couldn’t see the dirt. Between the black storm clouds and the ground fog, visibility was dropping pretty fast. That wasn’t good. I said, “You told me that same joke the first time I met you.”

“Did I?”

“Can you verify where we first met?”

“Sure,” he said. “Central District police station on East Baltimore Street.”

“Okay,” I said, “good to hear your voice, Simon. You want to tell me where the hell you are?”

He laughed. “Too far away for you to come get me. At least right now.”

I turned away from the window just as tendrils of fog began caressing the glass. “We need to get you back into protective custody, Simon.”

“Joe,” he said, “listen…I’m sorry for doing this to you.”

“Doing what?” When he didn’t answer I said, “We know about the cell phones, Simon.”

“Yeah…I guessed you’d figure it out. I just thought Church would send more people. I…I didn’t know it would be just three of you.”

My mouth went dry.

“Jesus Christ, Simon, what did you do?”

There was a sound. It might have been a sob, though it sounded strangely like bubbles escaping through mud. “Look…I was getting tired of waiting…and I knew that you’d be able to handle just about anything. So…I started reaching out to….”

“To who?”

“Potential buyers.”

“Oh…Christ….why?”

“I wanted to draw them in, just like the FBI said they were going to do. Only the Feds were taking way too much time. I was wasting my life away in this crappy little town.”

“Simon….”

“I offered to sell my plot. I…reached out to several buyers and told them that I had it all written down, and that they had to bring two million in unmarked bills. Don’t worry, I’d have turned over the cash. I just needed it to look and feel real to them. And they bought it, too. They thought I was selling out.”

“Who’s bringing the money, Simon?”

“All of them.”

“What do you mean? Damn it, Simon, how many buyers did you contact?”

“A lot.”

“Simon….”

“Six,” he said in a small and broken voice. “There are six teams of buyers. I told them to meet me at the house. I figured they’d get there and start shooting each other. It would be like a movie. I could sell that scenario. I could make a bestseller out of it…I could make a movie out of it…”

“Simon, when are the shooters expected here?”

“When? Joe…that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. That’s why I was sorry it was just the three of you. They’re already here. I…I didn’t mean to kill you.”

And the windows exploded in under a hail of high-caliber bullets.

Chap. 6

I dove for cover behind the couch. It wasn’t a good dive and it wasn’t pretty, but it got me low and out of the line of fire. Then I tried to melt right into the carpet. High-caliber rounds were chewing the couch to splinters and threads. The air above me was filled with thunder. Plaster and chunks of wall lath rained down on me.

The shots seemed continuous, so there had to be multiple shooters. They were firing full auto, and even with a high-capacity magazine it only takes a couple of seconds to burn through the entire clip.

I shimmied sideways, trying to put the edge of the stone fireplace between me and the shooters. I had my Beretta out, but the barrage was so intense that I couldn’t risk a shot.

Then the sound changed. There were new sounds. The hollow pok-pok-pok of small-arms fire and the rhythmic boom of a shotgun. Those sounds were farther away.

Top and Bunny returning fire.

The automatic gunfire swept away from me and split as the shooters focused on these two new targets. That gave me my moment, and I was up and running, pistol out. There was nothing left of the door except splintered wood and glass through which the fog rolled like a slow-motion tide. I went through it fast, feeling the splinters claw at my sleeves and thighs. I was firing before I set foot outside.

In combat you see more, process more, and all of it happens fast. That’s a skill set you learn quick or you get killed. As I came out of the house I saw five men standing in a loose shooting line in the turnaround. The fog was thick enough to cover them to midthigh. They were dark-skinned. Middle Eastern for sure, though from that distance I couldn’t tell from where. All four of them carried AK47s with banana-clips. Three were facing the garage, firing steadily at it; the other two were standing wide-legged as they leaned back to fire at the second floor.

I emptied my magazine into them. I saw blood puff out in little clouds of red mist as two of them staggered backward and fell, vanishing into the fog. Another one took a round through the cheek. Because he was shouting, the bullet went through both cheeks and left the teeth untouched. He was screaming louder as he wheeled around toward me.

I fired my last two rounds into his chest, and my slide locked back.

The remaining shooters opened up on me, and I dove behind the armored SUV. Their bullets pinged off of the heavy skin and smoked the window before ricocheting high into the sky.

The shooters wanted me so badly they forgot, in that one fatal instant, about Top and Bunny.

Bunny spun out a side door to the garage and fired three rounds with the shotgun, catching the left-hand shooter in the chest and face. Top leaned out of the second floor window and put half a magazine into the last shooter.

As the last one fell I swapped out the magazine in my Beretta and crept to the edge of the car. Simon Burke had said that there were six buyers. Five men lay sprawled on the bloody gravel.

Where was the sixth…?

I tapped my ear bud. “We have one more hostile,” I began, but Top cut me off.

“Negative, Cowboy,” he said, using my combat call sign, “we have multiple hostiles inbound.”

I turned and saw the fog swirling around two cars barreling down the long dirt road. Then there was a roar to my right and I saw another pair of vehicles — ATVs with oversized tires — crashing our way through the cornfields.

“Where’s this fog coming from?” demanded Top. “Can’t see worth a damn?”

“I got a team coming in on foot,” called Bunny. “Behind the house, running along a drainage ditch. Can’t make out numbers with that mist out there. No, wait…there’s a second team farther back in the corner. Damn! A third at nine o’clock to the front door. Four men in black. Geez…Boss…we’re under siege here. We need backup.”

We needed an army, but we weren’t likely to get one. The closest help was the naval airbase in Willow Grove. Half an hour at least.

With a sinking heart I understood the enormity of what Simon Burke had done. Not six buyers. Six teams of buyers. Conservative estimate — twenty men. Depressing estimate — thirty.

Coming straight at us.

Chap. 7

We needed five minutes. With five minutes we could have fitted out with Kevlar and ballistic helmets, strapped on vests heavy with fresh magazines, picked optimum shooting positions, and turned the whole farm into a killbox.

We needed five damn minutes.

We had thirty seconds.

“Talk to me, Cowboy,” said Top.

“Sergeant Rock and Jolly Green,” I barked. “Converge on me. Living room. Now.”

I spun around, yanked open the door of the SUV, ground the key in the starter, spun the wheel and stamped down. The big machine took an awkward, ugly lurch, then found footing and rolled heavily away from the house. I went completely around the roundabout, then jerked the wheel over and put the pedal to the floor as I aimed for the front door. The SUV punched a truck-sized hole through the shattered doorway, ripped across the living room floor and slammed into the stairs with enough force to rock the house to its foundations. I hadn’t had time to buckle up for safety, so I bashed forward and backward. I could taste blood in my mouth as I bailed out of the driver’s seat and ran to the back.

“Sergeant Rock, coming in!” yelled Top as he pounded down the stairs. He vaulted the wreckage of the bottom steps, ran across the hood, onto the roof, and dropped with a grunt into a squat next to me. He yelped in pain as his forty-year-old knees took the impact, but he sucked it up and staggered to me as I raised the back hatch.

“Coming in!” yelled Bunny, and then he was there, coming at us from the kitchen.

I clumsied open the gun lockers, and immediately six pairs of hands reached for the toys. I grabbed a bag of loaded magazines and an M4 and peeled away.

“Yo!” Top barked and tossed another bag to me. “Party favors!”

I snatched it out of the air and flashed him a grin. He grinned back. This was a total nightmare scenario, and only an insane oddsmaker would give us one in fifty on getting out of this. So…might as well enjoy it.

“Where, Boss?” asked Bunny.

“Kitchen. The fog might work for us. It’ll confuse everything out there. Go!”

“On it.” He shoved five drum magazines for the shotgun into a bag and slung it over his shoulder. Then he was gone, running to the kitchen.

“Top,” I said, “upstairs.”

“Why you keep making the old guy run up and down stairs?”

We both laughed.

He grabbed his gear and climbed over the wreckage.

I glanced through the broken window. The lead car was almost to the roundabout. It had slowed, though, and I figured that the converging teams were suddenly aware of one another. Who knows, I thought, maybe Burke was right. Maybe they’d slaughter each other while Top, Bunny and I stayed in here and played cribbage.

And maybe tomorrow I’d wake up looking like Brad Pitt. About as much chance of that.

I heard voices shouting and car doors slamming.

Then gunshots.

The first rounds were fired away from us, off to my three o’clock, the direction of the team on ATVs.

Then three other guns opened up on the house.

So much for cribbage.

Chap. 8

It became hell.

A swirling surreal white hell, with the red flashes of muzzle fire filtered by thick fog, and all sounds muted to strangeness. Overhead the storm grumbled and growled, but no rain fell.

Maybe one of these days I’ll look back on that ten minutes under the August sun in backwoods Pennsylvania and laugh about it. Maybe it’ll become one of those anecdotes soldiers tell when they want to story-top the last guy. Or, maybe when I think about it I’ll get the shakes and go crawling off to find a bottle.

Everyone was shooting at everyone.

I’ve never seen anything like it. Don’t ever want to see anything like it again.

One team was dead. That left five teams of shooters, sent by God only knows who. Three were Middle Eastern, I could tell that much, and that made sense. Then I heard someone yelling in Russian. Someone else yelling in Spanish.

I was yelling in every language I could curse in…and I am fluent in a long list of languages.

I crouched behind the open door of the SUV, reached around with the M4 and opened fire. I wasn’t aiming. No-damn-body was aiming. But everybody was sure as hell capping off a lot of rounds. My hearing will never be the same. Ditto my nerves.

I think I even screamed for a little bit. I’ll admit it, I’m not proud.

I fired the magazine dry, dropped it, slapped in another, fired, swapped it out, fired. The effort of holding the gun was rattling the bones in my arm to pieces, and I don’t think I hit anything with the first four magazines. The mist was chest high now, and the men out there were crouching. It was like trying to fight in the middle of a blizzard.

So I set down the gun and dug into the bag for one of Top’s ‘party favors.’ An M67 fragmentation grenade.

“Come to papa,” I murmured.

The M67 looks like a dark-green apple, but instead of juicy sweetness the spherical body contains six-and-a-half ounces of composition B explosive. When it goes boom, the body bursts into steel fragments that will forever change the life anything within fifteen meters. I lobbed one out through the hole that had been the front wall of the house. I never heard it bounce, never heard it land.

Everyone heard it when it blew. A loud, muffled whumph.

And everyone heard the screams that followed.

Another thing I’m not too proud to admit. I enjoyed those screams. Part of me did. The Killer that shares my mind with the Civilized Man and the Cop. That’s the part of me that’s always waiting in the tall grass, face grease-painted green and brown, eyes staring and dead, mouth perpetually caught in a feral smile.

The Killer wanted more, so I popped the pin on two more party treats and threw them out. More bangs, more screams.

Then I was up, laying the M4 over the hinge of the open door. Hot shell casings pinged and whanged off of the SUV’s frame and smoke burned my eyes. All I could taste was blood and gunpowder.

The smoke from the grenades wafted away on a breeze, and I could see one of the cars sitting on flat tires, its sides splashed with blood, windows blasted out. Two ragged red things lay sprawled on the gravel, and a trail of blood led toward the tall corn. The second vehicle was askew in the ditch that lined the driveway, its windshield and driver’s side polka-dotted with hundreds of bullet and pellet holes.

“Hey, Cap’n!” yelled Top from upstairs. “I’m running out of wall to hide behind.”

“I’m open to ideas,” I yelled back.

I think I heard him laugh. Top’s a strange guy. Like Bunny. Like me, too, I suppose. As much as the Civilized Man inside my head was cringing and whimpering, the Killer was totally jazzed. I’m kind of glad I didn’t have Kevlar and a ballistic shield, or I might have done something stupid.

Luckily, someone else did something stupid.

No, correct that, a bunch of people did a bunch of stupid things, and that’s why I’m still here to tell you about it.

It spun out this way….

The team that came in on the ATVs were yelling something in Farsi and trying to cut their way to the house. No way to tell if the guys who came in the cars were their enemies or simply business rivals. In either case, the ATV guys came rolling in, firing over the handlebars with their AKs, chopping the cars to pieces and ripping up the last three car guys. If this was a two-way fight, or even a three-way fight, they might have won. They were the biggest team. Eight men on four ATVs.

I leaned out and sighted on them and started to pick them off. I got both men in the lead vehicle with four shots, and the ATV twisted and fell over onto its side, slewing around with one of the men still in the saddle. The second ATV hit that one at about forty miles an hour and the driver and passenger tried to leap to safety. Tried wasn’t good enough.

Suddenly a shooter stood up out of the mist and aimed a pump shotgun at me. He caught me flatfooted while I was watching the ATV wreck. He was twenty feet away, right outside the shattered wall, and I saw his face crease into a wicked smile as he raised the barrel.

Suddenly the fog around him changed from milky white to bright red. The shooter’s fingers jerked the trigger, and the double-ought buckshot blew harmlessly into the gravel. The man canted sideways and fell, and as he dropped I saw another figure move like a dark shadow through the mist. It was small, and at first I had the irrational thought that it was Simon Burke, but this figure moved with oiled grace.

I aimed my M4 at him. Whoever he was, he belonged to one of the teams sent to take Burke. I mean, thanks for saving my life and all that, but this is one of those incidents where the enemy of my enemy wasn’t necessarily my friend.

I unloaded half a magazine at him, but the bullets swirled the fog without hitting anything. The figure had faded out of sight.

There was a crash behind me and I spun to see Bunny running in from the kitchen. A fusillade of shotgun blasts tore the back of the house to kindling. Bunny overturned the oak dining room table and crashed a breakfront on top of that. It would give him a few seconds of cover, but these guys had enough firepower to chew through anything.

He threw me a wild grin. “America’s Haunted Holidayland,” he yelled. “We’ll scare you to death.”

I nodded to the SUV. “That’s our last fallback. The armor should hold for a bit.”

He made a face, but nodded. A “bit” wasn’t much.

Bullets continued to hammer the house from all directions. But there were also occasional screams.

I cupped my hands and yelled, “You’re my hero, Top!”

His face immediately appeared at the top of the stairs. “Not me, Cap’n. They’re doing a good job on each other. Maybe we should try and wait this out.”

Before I could answer, two men charged through the open doorway. Both were firing AKs, and I had to do a diving tackle to save Bunny from the spray of bullets. We hit the floor and rolled over behind the couch. There was an overlapping series of shots, definitely from a different caliber, and I peered around the edge of the couch to see the two shooters sagging to their knees, both of them already dead from headshots that had taken them in the backs of their skulls and blown their faces off. As they fell forward I caught another glimpse of the slim, dark figure vanishing into the fog.

Only this time I saw the shooter’s face.

Just for a moment.

“Hey, Boss,” said Bunny, “was that…?”

“I think so.”

“He on our side or is he with one of the teams?”

I shook my head.

We crawled out, and I hurried over to the crumbling wall to recover my bag of grenades.

Only it wasn’t there.

The killer in the mist had taken it.

“He took the frags!” I yelled, and suddenly Bunny and I were scrambling back, ducking behind the SUV. Bullets still hammered the back, and there was no cellar.

“Oh man,” whispered Bunny, and now there was no trace of humor on his face. After a while even the black comedy of the battlefield burns away to leave the vulnerable human standing naked before the reality of ugly death. We were screwed. Totally screwed, and we knew it.

When the first grenade blew, Bunny closed his eyes and clutched his shotgun to his chest as if it was a talisman that would provide some measure of grace.

But the grenade didn’t detonate inside the house.

The blast was close, but definitely outside.

There was a second. A third. A fourth and fifth, and between each blast there were spaced shots. Not automatic gunfire. Spaced, careful pistol shots.

Men screamed out in the mist.

Men died in the mist.

I saw another shape move through the gloom. Not small. This one was big, but he was only a shadow within the fog. He turned toward me and I expected to see blue eyes.

The blood froze in my veins.

The eyes that looked at me through the fog were as red as blood and rimmed with gold.

And then they were gone.

I blinked. My eyes stung from the gunpowder and plaster dust. Had I seen what I thought I saw or were my eyes playing tricks?

I didn’t want to answer that, but…my eyes don’t play tricks.

We crouched, weapons ready to make our last stand a damn bloody one.

But the battle raged around the house. Around us.

“Top!” I yelled. “Talk to me!”

“We got new players, Cap’n.”

“What can you see?”

“Not a damn thing. No, wait…oh, holy—”

Three more blasts rocked the side of the house and suddenly all the gunfire in the front ceased.

There was a moment of silence from the back, too, but then shots started up again.

A voice called out of the mist. “In the house!”

I said nothing and waved Bunny to silence.

After a pause the voice yelled again. “Hey…John Wayne…you got some injuns on your six. You in this fight or are you waiting for Roy Rogers?”

I looked at Bunny.

“Well…son of a bitch.”

And that fast we were on our feet and running back to the kitchen, firing as we went. The incoming assault was less fierce, and we made it to what was left of the brick wall. A bullet plucked my sleeve and chips of brick dust flew past.

We saw them. Three groups left, but only a few of each. Two burly Russians behind a stack of hay bales over to the left. Couple of Arabs across the back lawn, using a toolshed as a shooting blind. Three Latinos to the left, firing from behind a tractor.

The voice called out of the mist. “Game on?”

I grinned. “Dealer’s choice!”

I thought I heard a laugh. “You guys take scarecrow and Tim Allen. I got John Deere.”

Bunny frowned at me for a moment before he got it. Scarecrows are stuffed with hay. Tim Allen’s comedy is all about tools. John Deere makes tractors.

Bunny said, “Yippie kiyay….”

I swapped out for a fresh magazine. “Say it like you mean it.”

He took a breath and bellowed into the fog.

They had the numbers. We had the talent.

I saw muzzle flashes coming from two points in the mist, catching the tractor in a crossfire. Bunny and I turned the toolshed into splinters. Top emptied four magazines into the straw.

The white hell outside became a red desolation.

The thunder of the gunfire echoed in the air for long seconds, and kept beating in my ears for hours.

The mist held its red tinge for a while, and then with a powerful blast of thunder, the rain began to fall.

When we went outside to count the living and the dead, we only found dead. Six teams. Thirty-two men.

There was no one else in the yard. No one else anywhere.

“Cap’n,” said Top as he came back from checking far into the cornfields, “that was Chief Crow and that Sweeney kid, wasn’t it?”

I said nothing.

The shapes had matched. One small figure, one big. The voice had matched Crow’s. Even the John Wayne reference.

But we never found footprints. Not a one. I blamed it on the rain.

The bullets dug out of the bodies of the shooters did not match any weapons found at the scene. When the service weapons of Chief of Police Malcolm Crow and Corporal Michael Sweeney were later subpoenaed for testing, the lands and grooves of their gun barrels did not match the retrieved rounds. Shell casings from a Glock similar to Sweeney’s and a Beretta 92F like the one Crow carried did not match the test firings performed by FBI ballistics. Witnesses put Crow and Sweeney elsewhere at the time of the incident.

“I’ve never seen a cover up this good in a small town,” I said to Church ten days later.

Instead of answering me, he stared at me for a long three count and ate another vanilla wafer.

Then he opened his briefcase and removed a manila folder marked with an FBI seal. He set it on the table between us, removed a folded sheet, placed it atop the folder, and rested his hand over them both.

“What’s that?” I asked.

Still making no comment, he handed me the folded paper. It was a report by the National Weather Service for August 16. There was no report of a storm, no Doppler record of storm clouds or fog.

“So? Somebody missed it.”

“When the forensics team took possession of the crime scene,” he said, “their reports indicate that the ground was dry and hard. There had been no rainfall in Pine Deep for eleven days.”

“Then we need new forensics guys.”

Church said nothing. He handed me the FBI folder. I took it and opened it. Read it. Read it again. Read it a third time. Threw it down on the table.

“No,” I said.

Mr. Church said nothing.

I picked up the folder and opened it. Inside were several documents. The first was a report from a forest ranger who found a body in the woods. The second was a medical examiner’s report. It was very detailed and ran for several pages. The first two pages explained how a positive identification was made on the body. Fingerprints, dental records, retina patterns. A DNA scan was included. A perfect match.

Simon Burke.

He had been severely tortured. His wrists and ankles showed clear ligature marks, indicating that he had been tightly bound. There were also bite marks on his wrists consistent with his having chewed through the cords. His stomach contents revealed traces of fiber.

According to the autopsy, Burke had managed to free himself from bondage and escaped from a cabin where he was being held. He made his way into the forest and apparently became disoriented. He was seriously injured at the time and bleeding internally. Forensic analysis of the spot where he was found corroborated the coroner’s presumption that Burke had collapsed and succumbed to his wounds. He died, alone and lost, deep in the state forest that bordered Pine Deep.

That wasn’t the tough part.

I mean…I felt bad for the little guy. He’d become a character in one of his own books. The intrepid underdog who outwits the bad guys and manages to escape. Except that this wasn’t a book. It was the real world, and the bad guys had already done him so much harm that it’s doubtful he could have been saved even if Echo Team had found him.

But…that wasn’t the reason Church sat there, staring at me with his dark eyes. It wasn’t the reason that my heartbeat hammered in my ears. It wasn’t the reason I threw the report down again.

The coroner was able to estimate the time of death based on the rate of decomposition. By the time he had been found on August 22, his body had passed through rigor mortis and was in active decay.

The estimated time of death was irrelevant.

It was the estimated date of death that was turning a knife in my head.

When the forest ranger had found him, Simon Burke had been dead for ten days.

Ten.

“No way,” I said.

Church said nothing.

“Burke called the AIC on the thirteenth.”

Church nodded.

“I spoke to him on the sixteenth.”

Church nodded.

“It was him, damn it.”

Church selected a vanilla wafer from the plate, looked at it, and set it down.

The date of death written on the report was August 11.

Mr. Church closed the folder, sighed, stood and left the room.

I sat there.

“God,” I said.

My heartbeat was like summer thunder in my head.