Threat warning

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

As the whisper-quiet Agusta Westland helicopter flared to land, Jonathan looked at his watch. Six-fifty-eight. From the ground, darkness still ruled, but on their approach, he noted the redness of the horizon, a harbinger of a beautiful day that would arrive far too soon.

He rode in the back of the chopper, with Gail on his right, and as Boxers went through the shutdown procedures, she shot him a look.

“He really is good, isn’t he?” It was her first time on an op with them, and she seemed genuinely surprised by the professionalism.

Jonathan took the comment more seriously than he probably should have. “Do yourself a favor,” he said. “Never doubt the Big Guy.” His words came out sharply, almost angrily. He’d come to think of it as Boxers’ curse: Big Guy’s size and abrasive manner projected oafishness to some people, a general lack of intelligence. They could not have been more wrong. In Jonathan’s experience his good friend was a brilliant technician and tactician who happened to be larger than most monuments. Fearless and intensely loyal, Boxers had pulled Jonathan’s ass out of the fire-both literally and figuratively-too many times to count.

“I need to go get us some wheels,” Jonathan said when it was quiet enough to be heard.

Boxers gave a splayed five-finger bye-bye wave over his shoulder, like something an infant might do. “Go,” he said. “Gunslinger and I can take care of things here until you get back.” Gunslinger had become Gail’s radio moniker after she shot down a helicopter a few months ago using only a rifle. She had rejected two previous handles that Boxers had tried to inflict on her: G-Girl and Triple-A, for anti-aircraft artillery.

“It shouldn’t take me too long,” Jonathan said. Like his colleagues, he wore woodland camouflage clothing, in part for its utilitarian use in blending with the surroundings, but also to blend in socially. This was deer-hunting season, and as in any rural community, half of the people they encountered today were likely to be wearing woodland camouflage clothing.

Jonathan slung his rucksack over his shoulders, glanced at his GPS to reaffirm his bearings, and then started off on his hike.

As a rule, Jonathan avoided stealing from innocents during missions. Not only did it offend his sense of right and wrong, it also added an unnecessary element of risk. Given all the moving parts in play during an 0300 mission, he didn’t want to risk it all coming apart because a local cop noticed a vehicle from a hot sheet.

Sometimes, though, it couldn’t be avoided.

By massaging her databases and scouring satellite images, and in general working the magic she was famous for, Venice had been able to find them the perfect command post-a dilapidated old house on the grounds of an abandoned mine-but it was way in the boonies. The nearest car listed for sale was fifteen miles away. If they’d had the luxury of time, Venice would have pored through the local classified ads for an appropriate vehicle and worked out a delivery plan using cash and messengers.

Unfortunately, time was the commodity in shortest supply, so that meant thievery.

Jonathan hiked at a brisk pace through the thinning forest, covering the mile and a quarter in a little over a half hour. According to the maps and the imagery, nothing but woods lay between him and this morning’s target, so he could afford to make some noise. As he closed to within a hundred yards or so, he slowed and took the time to survey his surroundings.

A house lay ahead, on the far side of what Jonathan estimated to be six acres of open field. To call it a farm was overstating it, but rows of decaying cornstalks testified to at least a little income from selling produce. Lowering himself to one knee at the edge of the tree line, Jonathan unslung his ruck and pulled binoculars from a side pocket.

A porch light was on, as was a light somewhere in the house, but on the far side. They seemed dim from this distance, making him wonder if the illumination had less to do with someone being up and around than the proverbial light in the window, left on all night to keep the boogeyman at bay.

The target for this mission was the white Dodge crew-cab pickup truck parked in front of the house. He watched the place for a full minute, looking for signs of movement that would make things more difficult. Seeing none, he set off across the field.

Daylight had arrived, though it was still quite dim. Like any Special Forces operative, he hated the daylight. It leveled the playing field too much.

He strolled upright through the dried, sagging cornstalks, making some effort to be stealthy, but not breaking his back over it. He had to assume that whoever lived in the house was awake, and if they looked out the window he wanted to appear to be a wandering hunter with nothing to hide. He figured that he’d be less likely to get shot at this way than if they saw him skulking about.

He covered the distance without incident, walking right up to the pickup, apparently without being seen. From here it would either be easy or get really complicated. He moved to the driver’s door and pulled the latch. It opened. Good start.

Jonathan lifted the Velcro flap from a pouch on his belt and withdrew his Leatherman tool. All he had to do was break the steering-wheel lock, strip the ignition keyway, and then he could be on the road with his stolen vehicle.

His butt had just hit the cushion when a small voice said, “Who are you?”

Startled the crap out of him. He whirled to see a little girl with dark hair standing eight feet away, wrapped in a bulky flannel robe over flannel pajamas and threadbare pink slippers. She had an odd look about her that Jonathan recognized in the dark as the telltale signs of Down syndrome.

“Hi,” he said. He felt his cheeks blushing, partly because he felt embarrassed to have been caught, but also because of the shame he felt for automatically assessing whether or not the girl was armed and posing a threat.

“Are you the repo man?”

“Excuse me?”

“She asked if you are the repo man,” said another voice. This one belonged to a tall young woman dressed similarly to the little girl. She also held a twelve-gauge over-and-under shotgun. It dangled by her side, her finger close to the trigger. “They said they’d be coming for the truck, and Jilly’s been obsessing about it ever since. That’s Jilly, by the way.”

Jonathan forced a smile, his mind spinning at a thousand miles an hour for his next move. Could it really be as simple as telling her that he was here to repossess her vehicle and drive off?

“Well?” the woman pressed. “Answer her. Are you the repo man?”

“Are you going to shoot me if I say yes?”

“No, I’m going to shoot you if you say you’re a burglar. If you say you’re the repo man, I’m going to ask for your ID, and then I’m going to be without a truck, which means that even if I got a job offer and an opportunity to pay back your boss’s precious money, I wouldn’t be able to take it.” Her voice had none of the twang that Jonathan associated with this part of the world. If anything, she sounded like Yankee elite. He thought he saw tears in her eyes.

Jonathan rose from the seat, keeping his. 45 angled away from the woman so she wouldn’t see it and panic. “How long ago did you lose your job?” he asked. It was a stall more than anything else, a way to bide time as he thought of a way out of this.

“Three years,” she said. “I used to work for Appalachian Acoustics until they got their new asshole owner and he put in all his own people.”

“Michael Copley is an asshole,” Jilly said.

“That’s enough out of you,” the woman scolded.

“Sorry, Mama.”

“So, are you or aren’t you?” the woman pushed.

“What are the chances that I can convince you to put that weapon down?” Jonathan asked.

She scowled. “My weapon? What are you, a cop?”

“If I say yes, are you going to shoot me?”

“Seems to be your fixation,” she said.

“I get that way with armed people.”

“Most people say gun,” she said. “You said weapon. My husband’s in the Army, and the only people I know who talk that way are his buddies and cops.”

Suddenly, Jonathan found himself caring more. “Is he on deployment?” he asked. “Your husband, I mean.”

“ Again,” she said, leaning heavily on the word. “To Iraq. Again . I thought this new guy in Washington was supposed to get us out by now.”

“Wars are complicated things,” Jonathan said. “When is he due back?”

“What’s it to you?”

Jonathan shrugged with one shoulder. “Let’s just say I have a soft spot for active-duty personnel.”

“There it is again,” the woman said. “You all sound alike. Who are you?”

“Well, I’m not the repo man. How’s that for a start?”

She lifted the gun to hold it in both hands, but with the barrel still pointed harmlessly. “Not so good,” she said. “Jilly, come over here by me.”

The little girl looked confused.

“Now, Jilly.”

Suddenly frightened, Jilly scampered over to her mom.

“Suppose you tell me why you’re in my truck, if you’re not the repo man.”

Over the years, Jonathan had honed an ice-melting smile that by itself had defused many a volatile situation. He used that now. “I came here to steal it,” he said.

The double barrels pivoted closer.

“The weapon is not necessary, ma’am. I swear to you. You don’t want your daughter to see you kill a man anyway. Not over a car. Besides, I’m not going to steal it anymore.”

The woman gave a wry chuckle as she jiggled the shotgun a little. “I could have told you that.”

“Fair enough. Fact is I’m going to help you.”

She hardened her stance. “I don’t need your help.”

Jonathan held her gaze. “I think you do. How much do you owe on the truck?”

“That’s none of your business.”

Jonathan shrugged. “In a different circumstance, I’d agree, but let’s be honest here. It’s a cold morning, and you were worried enough about having your truck repossessed that you stayed up all night with a shotgun. All things considered, I’d argue that privacy is not your first priority. Come on, tell me. How much do you owe?”

She snorted a derisive laugh. “What, are you going to buy it?”

“Yes,” Jonathan said.

Her face went blank. “Yes, what?”

“Yes, I’m going to buy your truck.”

“It’s not for sale.”

Jonathan just stood, giving her time to hear the ridiculousness of her own words.

“If I let you buy it, what am I supposed to do? I’ll be stranded out here.”

Jonathan cocked his head. “What was your plan when you thought I was the repo man?”

“I didn’t have one. That’s why I was going to try and talk him out of it.”

“With a shotgun? Who did you plan to have take care of Jilly while you were in prison?”

She threw an uncomfortable glance at her daughter, but said nothing.

Jonathan took the opportunity to further drive his point home. “Wouldn’t it be better to greet the repo man with a wad of cash than a twelve gauge?”

The woman clearly didn’t know what to do. “So, what, you expect me just to take a check from you? Even if it was good, without the truck-”

“I said cash,” Jonathan interrupted. “You know, folding money.”

Her shoulders sagged in disbelief. “You just happen to have twenty-two thousand eight hundred and fifty dollars on you?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

“Then why not just buy a car of your own?”

“That’s what I’m trying to do,” he said. He was being deliberately obtuse now.

“I mean-”

“I know what you mean. Thing is, there are no dealerships out here.”

The woman scowled as a thought crossed her mind. “Where are you from? How did you get here?”

This was why it was better to work at night-why it was always a bad idea to engage in chitchat.

Jilly sneezed and hugged herself tightly. “Mommy, I’m cold.”

“Me, too, honey.”

“Let’s go inside, then,” Jonathan suggested.

The woman coughed out another laugh. “Excuse me?”

“It’s warm inside,” he said.

“You really expect me to invite a strange man into my house?”

Jonathan polished his smile. “There’s a lot going on right now that I didn’t expect, but it’s happening anyway. What are your choices?” He counted the options on his fingers. “One, you can shoot me, but for the sake of argument, let’s stipulate that you’re not going to do that. Two, you can just take my money and let me drive off in your truck, but it doesn’t look like that’s happening, either. Three, you can go inside and just leave me out here, in which case I’ll just take the truck. Four, we can all continue to stand out here together and freeze, but that’s just plain stupid. That leaves the most logical choice, which would have us all go in together. You have the shotgun, after all.”

Again, she stared as she tried to wade through it all. In the east, the sun had fully bloomed.

“Look,” Jonathan said. “I know we met awkwardly, but I really am one of the good guys. Either take my money for the truck and let me drive off, or let’s all go inside. It makes no sense for Jilly to be shivering like that.”

“So, I’m just supposed to trust you. The stranger who was about to steal my car.”

“I’ll introduce myself, then. I’m Leon Harris.” He considered reaching out to offer his hand, but worried that it might come off as aggressive. “Look. I’m going to step away from the truck now, and when I do, you’re going to see a holstered pistol on my thigh. Don’t freak out.”

She didn’t freak out, exactly, but the business end of the shotgun lined up closer to his chest. She’d still miss if she fired, but Jonathan didn’t think she knew that.

“Put it on the floor,” she commanded.

He pushed the truck’s door closed. “I can’t do that,” he said. “First of all, it’s an expensive weapon, and second, it’s modified to have really sensitive parts. It’s not a weapon that other people should handle.”

Her eyes remained locked on the weapon.

“Ma’am, I know that this is stressful and confusing, and to be honest with you, there’s a lot of it that I can’t explain. What I want you to understand-and the reason why I didn’t just continue to hide my weapon from you-is that if doing you harm were on my agenda, I’d be doing it, and with all respect, there’s nothing you could do to stop me.”

“I could shoot you.”

“And I could shoot you.” He said this in the most reasonable tone. “Or, we could shoot each other, but if it came to that, I one-hundred-percent guarantee that I would still be standing here unharmed when the smoke cleared. My point, though, is the very opposite of any of that. I have no intention of harming you or your daughter.”

She lowered the muzzle to the ground. “Susan Shockley,” she said. “Call me Sam. Or call me idiot, because that’s what I probably am for doing this.” She turned and put her hand on Jilly’s shoulder. “Come on, sweetie. Let’s get you warm.”

Jonathan wasn’t quite sure what they’d decided to do here.

“Come on, Mr. Harris,” Sam said. “Do you like coffee?”

They sat in the kitchen at a rectangular table that might have been hand-hewn from local hardwoods. At the far end, closest to the window that provided a sweeping view of the fields at the rear of the house, a place was set with nice china, complete with crystal stemware. Sam did not sit there, and she did not offer the place to Jonathan. She must have sensed his trustworthiness, because she’d returned the shotgun to its rack over the fireplace in the adjacent family room, where Jilly sat on an overstuffed chair, wrapped in her blanket and watching cartoons.

While his hostess moved through the ritual of brewing the coffee, Jonathan set his ruck on the floor and opened the top flap. On missions like this, it always paid to have cash on hand, the more the better. He counted out thirty thousand dollars in banded stacks of Franklins and set the money on the table.

Sam saw it as she was about to pour coffee into mugs, and she froze. “You were serious?” she said.

“A deal’s a deal,” Jonathan said. “My word is my bond. I can do platitudes and cliches all day.”

Steam rose lazily from the mugs. “Sugar’s on the table,” Sam said, pointing with her forehead to the bowl in front of him. “I’ve got milk if you need it.”

“No thanks,” Jonathan said. Ordinarily, he did drink his coffee with cream, but he didn’t want her waiting on him. For today, black would do just fine.

Sam took the seat across from Jonathan, and as she settled in, he pushed the stack of bills over to her. She made no effort to touch them. “What are you really about, Mr. Harris? Is that even your real name?”

“It’s real enough,” he hedged. “And what I’m really about is a very important matter that I can’t discuss.”

“Where did you come from?”

Jonathan sighed. “Tell you what,” he said. “Rather than you asking a lot of questions that I can’t answer, let’s just stop at me being on the side of the angels.”

“Did you rob a bank or something? That’s a lot of money. It’s a whole lot of cash.”

“I don’t use credit cards for my work,” Jonathan said, again with the smile. “And most of what I need to buy costs a lot of money.”

Sam looked at the stack of bills more closely. She picked up one of the packets and riffled it, perhaps checking to see if it was real. “This looks like thirty thousand dollars.”

“That is thirty thousand dollars.”

“I don’t owe that much on the truck.”

Jonathan twitched a shoulder. “Keep the change. For the inconvenience.”

Sam scowled deeply. “That’s almost six thousand dollars in change. I can’t do that.”

“Sure you can. I want you to have it. Surely you can use it. If you’re upside down on the car, then you must be upside down on other debts as well. Apply the excess to those.”

Sam placed the packet on top of the stack and leaned heavily on her forearms. “This is crazy. Why are you doing this?”

The real answer-the true answer-was that he felt sorry for her. That preserved place setting at the end of the table was testament to the sad, brave story that was being lived every day in tens of thousands of households around the world. Spouses and children waiting for their husbands and fathers to return from war. It pained Jonathan that this particular warrior would return to poverty, perhaps with only a few short months before his next deployment. Jonathan could afford to pay off every debt owed by thousands of such families, and this particular one happened to be within reach.

But he’d share none of that with this young mother, lest his altruism come off as creepy. Instead, he explained, “I need to buy time. I need you to feel fairly compensated so that you don’t pick up a phone and call the police as soon as I leave.”

Sam considered that. He could see that her defenses were weakening. “This must mean that you’re intending to use the truck for a crime. I don’t want to be any part of that.”

“It doesn’t mean that at all. If someone comes and asks, tell them that you sold the vehicle to a stranger who offered you full price. If push comes to shove, you’ll have the record from the paid-off repo guy that he got his money. The paper trail will work for you.”

“Until you get caught and testify against me.”

Generally, it wasn’t this difficult to give a generous gift. “I never said that I was going to do anything illegal. You assumed that I was, and I gave you a good cover. Hypothetically, though, if lawbreaking were on my mind, the last thing I would do is throw you under the bus.”

Sam clearly had no idea what she should do.

“Think about it, Sam,” Jonathan said, closing the deal. “Is there really much choice to be made here?”

Turns out there wasn’t.