by JC Ryan
ONE ADVANTAGE TO the longer route, Rex reflected, was that he’d arrived at the border in the darkest hours of the morning, rather than in the twilight hours he’d have been forced to wait through if he’d gone the southern route. The disadvantage was that he was forced to use his headlights to find a road off the main highway where he might sneak across. He’d had a few bad moments when he thought police or border guards might have been following him.
Finally, though, he’d found what he was looking for. About twenty miles north of the outskirts of Lahore, he’d followed a meandering track that wasn’t fit for a passenger vehicle, and he was almost certain it would lead him into India.
Fortunately, the SUV was up to the punishment, though Rex wasn’t sure his bones were. He’d stopped, killed the headlights, and switched the engine off, and then sent Digger ahead to scout for any people, just like he’d done at the Afghan-Pakistan border.
The first Rex knew of the trouble was when headlights, two pairs of them, appeared in his rear-view mirrors. They were coming up fast, and it soon became apparent that they were too close for him to drive away. Besides, Digger was still out on his reconnaissance trip. Even if he did try it, he couldn’t outrun them now, and he didn’t know the terrain. They did. He decided it was better to try to talk or bribe his way out of the situation than ending up dead or seriously injured at the bottom of a ravine.
If there were only two of them, one in each vehicle, he could possibly take them. If more, he’d need Digger, or a lot of fortune. He just hoped his compatriot would sense his dilemma and return. He didn’t dare call him – it would give the people approaching him warning, and they might shoot Digger.
I’ll just have to rely on my wits.
He stepped out of the car, his hands on his head, before the unwelcome visitors came to a stop. One, an SUV like his, came to a halt within six inches of him, raising a cloud of dust that had him choking and wishing he could lower his hands. He didn’t dare. There was in all likelihood a gun trained on him already. Also, with the vehicle’s headlights on bright, the person in the car could see him better than he could see the driver or passenger, if any.
The other vehicle, yet another SUV, swept around the other side of his and stopped at an angle that blocked his way. Rex began hoping that these people were drug traffickers rather than border guards and therefore, maybe, more inclined to bribery. He’d also have no hesitation to kill drug traffickers. But as they stepped out of their vehicles, those hopes were dashed. Each SUV carried two uniformed men. And as he’d assumed, all had their weapons pointed at him.
What would work better, pretending to be a lost American, or a hefty bribe?
How much would it take?
He tried the cheap way first, babbling in English about losing his way. It was plain as the nose on his face they either didn’t understand him or weren’t buying his story. Then he remembered he didn’t look like an American at all, not just because of his tan skin and dark hair but mostly because of the loose-fitting Afghan clothes and full beard making him look as local as any of the locals. Definitely not American.
He forced himself to relax and lowered his hands slightly.
The border guards tensed.
“We don’t believe you got lost,” one of them said. “If you were lost you would have stopped a long way back, there’s not even a road here.”
The money option it is then.
Rex grinned broadly and started speaking in Arabic. He didn’t know if it was the right dialect, but he suspected these guards would understand ‘money’ in any language.
“Gentlemen, I have a proposal that might interest you. I have some money with me. You can have half of it. I only want to cross the border undisturbed. No harm is done.”
“How much?” one of them asked.
“Eight hundred US,” Rex said.
Three of the guards lowered their weapons after a short conference among them. Rex couldn’t hear what the fourth was saying, but from the others’ nods, he recognized the one who still pointed his weapon was the leader. His impression was confirmed when the man spoke.
“We think we will first search your vehicle. Then we will decide what we take in return for your request. If we’re happy with what we find, you will leave our country. Everybody will be happy, yes?”
No. I won’t be happy. Rex thought. They’ll take everything, and they’ll probably still be unhappy, mainly because they won’t want me to remain alive after the princely sum of money and diamonds they’ll find. They’ll shoot me for that. Maybe they’ll shoot me even if they’re very happy.
He seriously regretted not coming out of his vehicle with his and Trevor’s weapons both blazing.
Digger was nowhere in sight, and Rex was in big trouble.
Just then, the moon peeked over the nearest hill and lit the trail behind the guards with a lone ray of relative brightness. One of the shadows on the trail was moving with deliberate stealth.
Digger!
If ever he had thought the dog had extrasensory perception or a keener understanding of language than he had any right to, Rex hoped it now. He couldn’t lower his hand to give the attack signal, and he couldn’t call out. Digger would have to figure this one out on his own.
Hurry, boy!
As if he read minds, Digger burst into full attack mode, growling like a demented bear.
The guards whirled to meet the unknown threat, and Rex sprang into action moving like a tornado, causing mayhem and destruction as he moved.
He tackled the one guard whose weapon was still a threat. Before the guard knew what hit him, Rex slammed his elbow with force into a rock making him lose the weapon. He heard the man scream from the pain of the impact while he was getting off him, moving swiftly to the next guard.
Digger had one guard down on the ground. The man was engaged in a fight for his life, and the other two were dancing around them trying to find a gap to shoot the dog but were unable to do so because they’d hit their colleague.
They paid Rex no attention. He rushed over and tapped one on the shoulder. The man turned, Rex felled him with one powerful roundhouse, breaking his nose, sending him staggering backward a few yards, where he tripped over a boulder and hit a big rock with the back of his head with a dull thud. He slowly sunk to the ground, unconscious.
The man next to the one who got his nose broken heard the commotion and turned, just in time to receive a vicious head butt from Rex. The man’s heels and back of his head hit the ground simultaneously — lights out.
Calmly, Rex picked up one of the guards’ weapons, an ancient AK-47, and pointed it at the last guard, the one who was still trying to keep Digger away from his throat.
“Leave it,” he said to Digger.
Digger retreated. Rex stepped forward and kicked the man in the face, breaking his jaw, which sent him to dreamland.
The guard who Rex had tackled was sitting on the ground moaning, his arm broken at the elbow.
Rex told Digger to guard the man. He went to retrieve the keys to both vehicles, gathered up the guards’ weapons, and put them in the back seat of his SUV.
“This is your lucky night,” Rex said. “You’re all alive. You could have taken my first offer, and you could’ve walked out of here with no injuries and a handy sum of money.” He went around to all of them and cuffed them with their own handcuffs.
The fight had taken thirty seconds. The cleanup, maybe five minutes. He was still on schedule, and the moon had risen enough for him to see where he was going. He and Digger got into their own SUV and drove off over the border unhindered.
Now he was looking for the glow of a town of any size to navigate the back roads that no map showed. He’d make for the town, figure out where he was, and then head for New Delhi. Another night of no sleep, but the end was in sight. Soon he’d be safe, and with a new identity provided by a man he knew in the city, he’d start a new life.
He’d never thought it would be as a dog owner. Or maybe he wasn’t a dog owner a
t all, because at times he felt like the dog controlled him. Nevertheless, Digger represented a layer of complexity that Rex had never had to worry about before. All countries required quarantines of animals entering. He couldn’t be tied down, so Digger would need some kind of forged papers, too. Rex was also certain that Digger’s diet of the past few days wasn’t what he should be eating. The stench emanating from Diggers side of the cabin every now and then attested to that. But India, despite its Third World status, surely had decent veterinarians and doctors. He knew Indian doctors were among the best in the world, at least those who were practicing in the US.
After a bit more thought, Rex realized he really had no idea about either. He’d have to ask, but he could do so easily in New Delhi, where he didn’t have to pretend to be a native to get along, although he spoke Urdu and Hindi, the native languages of seventy million, and two-hundred and sixty million Indian people respectively. What he needed was at least a week in the country to get his new documents, learn something more about dogs, decide on a destination, and craft a plan for his new life. The newfound luxury of time, and to decide for himself what he’d do next, was going to require a conscious effort from him to get used to.
Not since he’d vowed revenge on the terrorist bombers who’d killed his family in 2004 had he let go of his anger. Over the years, it had grown, in fact, to include drug traffickers and people who exploited other people with evil intent of any kind. Had he done enough against terrorists? The first question was, what would be enough? And by whose definition?
Rex found he couldn’t answer those questions unequivocally. Logic told him he’d done a lot. It also argued that he’d been given skills and talents that obligated him to use them, and they were most suited to the life he’d lived for the past ten years. Emotion told him he just wanted some peace for a change, and to find himself again. The self that he used to be, before the bombs at Atocha Station, Madrid, Spain, on March 11, 2004 changed his life.
As he drove through the early morning hours toward a future that might afford him that peace and inner fulfillment, he decided that it would be best to start by learning to take life one day at a time.
He’d start by getting rid of the SUV, which was now too hot to be seen in. In leaving those border guards alive, he’d made the vehicle a target, along with himself and Digger. He doubted it would be soon, but eventually the Pakistanis might decide the affront was too much to let pass and would notify Indian authorities.
By the time that happened, Rex would want to have a new vehicle and a new appearance, maybe even a new identity.
Still, he didn’t regret leaving the guards alive. He could justify killing anyone involved with terrorism or drug trafficking. He couldn’t justify killing law enforcement personnel, even slightly crooked ones that would have taken everything he needed to continue to survive.
Then he realized the first thing he had to do now was to find a suitable spot where he could pull off the road and get rid of the arsenal of weapons and ammunition he had with him.
Chapter Thirty-One
Langley, Virginia, June 25, 11:49 p.m.
BRUCE CARSON PREENED in his full-length mirror. Dressed for a night at his club, he thought he made a dashing figure. His hair, once a rich chestnut brown, had been softened since he’d turned fifty by a few silver hairs shot throughout and especially at the temples. His blue eyes had charmed many a woman, including his wife, who lay sleeping in the bed behind him.
His body was still trim, no sign of softness around his middle like so many men of his age. He eschewed beer, drank only straight vodka when he indulged at all. He’d never have that unappealing round belly. The truth was, his peculiar sexual appetites meant that he’d keep himself in outwardly healthy shape as long as he could.
He walked softly to the bed and checked that his wife was still deep in her Ambien-induced sleep, though he knew she was. She wouldn’t wake for hours, probably not until he was in his office the next morning. Miranda was a beautiful woman, and he was proud to have her at his side when the occasion was formal. No one needed to know that she was useless to him as a woman, and that she preferred it that way. They provided each other with what each needed. He provided her a respectable life of luxury and didn’t demand children, or sex for that matter. She would have found either an imposition. She provided him with camouflage. The arrangement worked well for them.
The club in question was also camouflage of a sort. A venerable gentlemen’s club, it had been in existence since before the Civil War, though its present location was modern. Current members included Senators and members of Congress, high-ranking officials of government, wealthy businessmen, and three token women. No one could say that the club was not moving into the modern world, since its strictly male membership had relaxed the gender rules and admitted women.
The first floor housed a world-class restaurant, a billiards room, a gaming room, and a bar designed with its members’ privacy in mind. Above, meeting rooms of various sizes were available for members’ use, and on the third floor, ten suites for overnight use could be reserved by any member. Most members assumed the basement was for the use of the staff that kept the rest of the club running smoothly, and they would be right.
However, below that basement was a secret warren of other levels. Dedicated to debauchery of every kind, from the distasteful to the frankly illegal, it was known only to a select few of the club’s membership, the platinum members. Carson was one of them.
When Carson left his home that night, he was accompanied by only two of his security team. The same two went with him to his club three or four times a week. Because of its membership, it had been checked regularly for security problems, but no agency had discovered the secret door that led to the lowest levels. Carson’s detail didn’t find it necessary to usher him into the club. His driver let him out at the curb, and then the two agents went to a more prosaic evening’s entertainment until he called them. As far as they knew, he was meeting with cronies, perhaps enjoying a billiards game or a bit of harmless gambling.
The shadow who saw Carson and his detail exit his home that night waited until the car had pulled away, and then keyed his coms link. “He’s on the way.”
Carson had no skills in counter surveillance. He wouldn’t even had known if someone had blatantly followed him. His detail would have, if the tail hadn’t been skilled, but this tail wasn’t behind them at all. It hadn’t taken long to discover Carson’s frequent patterns. The combination of social media, a prominent Washington gossip rag, and old-fashioned footwork had given the Old Timers the most likely spot for Carson to practice any habit that could give Brandt leverage.
One of them was the homeless woman on the corner of the block where the club was located. When Carson arrived, she confirmed it. They had their first clue to follow. It might lead nowhere. In the days and potentially weeks to come, if there was dirt, they’d dig it up. If not, then other means of persuading Carson to tell the truth about the ambush on Rex Dalton and his team might have to be found. Usually, it didn’t take weeks.
These men and women knew as well as Brandt did that there were few people on earth whose souls and consciences were so pure that there was nothing they wouldn’t want known publicly. Everyone had a secret. Most could be used as tools to pry out the truth.
***
MEN IN POSITIONS of power know that ordinary vices – alcohol, paid escorts, minor drug use, or gambling that ordinary men are forgiven – can destroy a political, military, or corporate career. That doesn’t mean they don’t have these vices and those that are out of the ordinary as well. It only means that they use their wealth and influence to hide them even as they practice them.
What Hathaway had known about his pet Senator all those years ago was that the Senator preferred young boys to his proper Southern wife. What the Senator knew about Carson was that he enjoyed being humiliated and dominated by beautiful women. These pleasures and more were available to them in absolute secrecy in their club-within-a
-club. As everyone whose appetites become obsessions know, caution only goes so far. Eventually, the physical evidence shows up. Overeaters, even when they eat in secret, get fat. Drug users can’t hide the tracks on their arms or the hollow eyes and skeletal thinness forever.
Some vices take longer to become known, as the Senator could have attested. His had surfaced only once, and the result was to enslave him to Hathaway forever. Because he’d convinced himself it was only an unnecessarily Puritan society that forbade his habits, he could present a serene and saintly countenance to the congregation when he showed up at church on Sunday mornings. Carson, however, had made no such peace with his vice.
Buried deeply within his own psyche, Carson nursed a preference for men. He’d adored his cold father and concluded the man didn’t love him because he wasn’t good enough. By the time he reached high school and knew what he was, he had formed a hatred for others like him along with a shame of his nature that required punishment. He was in his thirties before he found what he needed to suppress what he considered his depravity, the latent homosexuality he could not indulge for reasons of his career as well as his upbringing.
Equally shameful was the form his punishment took, and lately it had created a nightmarish loop in which he’d go to the club to be punished for craving a man’s touch and then back again for having indulged in the punishment in the first place. It was beginning to take its toll when his mind had been taken off it by the Senator’s demand that he intervene in the problem in Afghanistan.
Brandt’s not very well veiled hints had given him such anxiety that he required punishment for not setting it up more cleverly to avoid suspicion. Carson was intelligent enough to know that he was making any excuse he could for ‘going to the club’. He was well-practiced in hiding his motivations from even himself.
In truth, Carson was aware that public opinion was no longer openly hostile to gays, even those in public service. Nevertheless, a lifetime of habits in thought and deed prevented him from the breakthrough he would have needed to be true to his nature. Furthermore, his wife would have seen to it that he was left in relative poverty if he’d humiliated her by coming out of the closet. He considered himself trapped in the life he’d created, but at the same time he was grateful it was available to him and he could afford it. So, any time his mind went into the loop of self-awareness, he put on a thicker coat of arrogance and continued like a hamster on a wheel – doing what he did and pretending to enjoy it.
