He pulled off the highway and wound his way through downtown, pulling in and out of parking garages and through alleys, until he parked in the underground garage of the Hyatt. He parked right next to his open air Jeep that was still parked there, though he was mildly surprised the FBI hadn’t confiscated the vehicle when they thought he was the drug lord. It seemed like so much longer than a month since they had first arrested him and turned him over to the TER for interrogation.
Carl got out and walked up the exit ramp and out of the garage. He walked east a bit, crossed the street, and entered another parking garage. He found Mr. Garcia’s backup cars and noted they were exactly as he’d told Garcia to purchase. They were all old, nondescript SUVs with faded paint, dents, and scratches. All were legally purchased and properly registered with the state Motor Vehicle Department. He selected one at random and found the keys in the most obvious place—above the visor—and left the parking garage.
He detoured to the far west end of Central Avenue to grab another duffel of cash from his storage unit. If he got to them in time, his survivors would need the cash. It was at that moment Carl realized his operation had completely unraveled and he was left with virtually no usable assets. He still had the contents of the storage shed, but he had no local team members to rely on for support. He felt exposed and vulnerable because he wasn’t a trained field agent like Palmer or the mercs. He was a thinker, a big-picture guy, not an experienced tactical combatant. He was in it up to his eyeballs.
He still had the four mercs he’d left along with Agent Palmer, but they were a million miles away in Mexico. They were tasked with locating the president’s chief of staff and figuring out who the adversary was. When he returned to Mexico, Carl needed a plan to eliminate that person, but he knew a team of six was really inadequate for that task.
Merc Four and her men were dead. They had failed to rendezvous at the municipal airport. Carl felt another pang of heartache as he thought about Julia Reyes’s pretty smile and her hugs. Her mother had made her own decisions by becoming mixed up in the mess with her husband, long before Carl came into the picture, but Julia was innocent. She didn’t deserve the life she’d been given. Ultimately, he knew their deaths were his fault. He should have expected his adversary to bring the big guns to the party. He should have had a contingency for that possible outcome.
It was also entirely possible he would never see Mr. Garcia again. He felt an attachment to the young man. He was going to miss him. Garcia was like a protégé. The young man had been the first man he had hired after his son was killed.
Before he’d gone on his mission of revenge.
Before he started murdering FBI agents and covert government operators.
Before he became the American Terrorist.
If he discounted the moral and ethical implications of his illegal operations, somehow Garcia had become his last connection to that previous life before the killing and revenge had started.
Carl made his way back to northbound I-25 and headed toward Santa Fe. He figured the Chapmans would be less capable of displaying hostility toward him than Special Agent Cummings, so he decided to go for them first. Anita Chapman wasn’t going to be happy to see him again, not after what he did to her. Her husband wasn’t going to be happy either.
Chapter 35
2157 hours MST Friday
Santa Fe, NM
Carl drove the speed limit, taking almost an hour to get to Santa Fe. He easily found the Chapman house in the east part of town, up near Canyon road where the well-to-do folks lived. The address had been efficiently included on the task list.
He appreciated the fact that in this part of town, the roads were rarely straight for any significant distance. That meant anyone trying to conduct surveillance on him, or on the Chapman house, would have to be in close proximity, which raised their potential for exposure.
Carl saw nothing suspicious as he parked along a street with no sidewalk. He had changed into civilian clothes on the plane, then changed back into his black tactical gear at the storage unit. Glancing around his old SUV again, he checked his Glock, pulled the suppressor from a Velcro pocket on his vest, and screwed it onto the end of his gun.
Like many older sections of Albuquerque and Santa Fe comprised mostly of adobe homes, the Chapman’s home had an alley behind it—a throwback to times when garages and carriage houses were accessed from the back of houses. Carl walked quietly along the alley behind the Chapman house and paused at the gate leading into their backyard. He looked up and back. Almost as an afterthought, he thumbed the release lever on his Glock, let the magazine fall out of the hand grip and into his left palm, held it up in the dim light, and reassured himself the mag was full. He slid the mag back in and quietly snapped it into place with his palm. The wall was thick adobe, a six-footer, so he couldn’t see over it. Good news was no one could see him approach either, until he was actually in the back yard. He eased the gate open a bit and slid through with his handgun pointed at the ground near his feet.
He wasn’t too concerned about the husband. Despite the violence he had put the family through just three days ago, these were normal people who went through their lives feeling insulated from people like Carl. Their gate wasn’t locked, and the drapes in the expansive family room windows facing him from fifty feet away were wide open. He wouldn’t be surprised if the patio door was unlocked. That’s how normal people lived. Even when their lives were touched by violence, they assumed lightning never struck twice.
The backyard was expensively landscaped with gravel, sand, natural trees, and shrubs. There was no grass. The high moon lit the yard, and Carl moved easily among the shadows until he stood next to the sliding patio door. He pushed the handle and the extra-wide door slid open an inch. He felt heat waft through the crack.
He scanned the patio once more before making his entrance and understood why the door was unlocked. A huge pile of firewood was neatly stacked just off the far side of the concrete slab. The cloudless sky had allowed the temperature to plummet down below twenty; a perfect night for a roaring fire in the corner kiva fireplace.
Even as he contemplated whether to sneak in quietly or to move in fast, Anita’s teenage son went over and stoked the fire. It blazed up almost immediately and Carl heard the snaps and pops as tiny nodules of sap in the soft pine logs blasted with mini-explosions of smoke and sparks. Carl couldn’t clearly see Anita because she was seated on the couch, on the other side of her husband, but he could see the two-year-old in her lap clapping gleefully and two of Anita’s smaller children—they looked like twin girls—were cheering and laughing on the floor just in front of her.
Carl risked another peek to see the whole room and where everyone was in it. Todd rose from the long, plush couch and Carl’s gaze followed the man as he went into the kitchen. Then he looked back at Anita, and his breath caught in his throat at the sight of her. She saw him at the same instant and screamed.
Tried to scream.
Carl pushed the big glass door open easily and stepped inside as Anita uttered more of a croak than a scream. Her mouth was held nearly shut by the metal contraption strapped around her head. A black strap stretched around the back of her head and another stretched over the top of her head and beneath her jaw. Another forehead strap was attached to the over-the-head strap and was held against Anita’s forehead with a cushion pad. A single, slender metal bar was attached to the forehead strap and extended down to her chin, following the contours of her face, nose and mouth. It was held against her chin with another cushion pad.
A horizontal, inflexible wire attached from the vertical bar and the ends of the wire arms disappeared into her jawbones at the edges of her mouth. The whole apparatus, Carl knew, was to prevent her jaws and facial bones from healing crooked and disfiguring her after the beating she had received at his hands.
My God! I did that to her.
He shuddered as he relived the memory and for the briefest moment he forgot about the teenager tending to the
fire.
Until the boy grunted.
Carl saw the chunk of wood coming at his head from the extreme edge of his peripheral vision, and at the last fraction of a second, he did his Matrix move. He leaned backward and to the side, arms flung out to either side, and the dry feathered bark of the wood actually brushed his nose. The small log flew through the space his head had just occupied, hit the far wall ten feet to Carl’s left, and stuck in the drywall.
Slowly bringing himself upright, Carl looked at the young man and pointed the Glock at him, but kept his finger off the trigger. He had no intention of shooting anyone, but the sight of a handgun with a huge suppressor on the barrel was a scary sight for most normal folks. It had the desired effect on the teen and his eyes flared wide.
“Nice throw, kid. Now sit your ass down.”
The teen did as he was told, but glared at Carl all the way over to the couch. No doubt, he was recalling Mr. Garcia’s three men who had taken the family hostage. He sat next to his mom and to Carl’s surprise, Anita Chapman passed the two-year-old from her lap to her son, stood, and walked over to Carl. She stood silently before him for a few seconds.
She was a pitiful sight. One eye was still half closed and discolored, though most of the swelling from his beating had obviously gone down. She had a string of tiny butterfly bandages stuck to her left eyebrow where he had struck her repeatedly with the butt of his gun while trying to get her into the basement safe that was to be her prison cell. She still wore a clear plastic nose guard taped to her cheeks.
If she’d just gotten in the vault like I told her…
She gazed at him through green eyes. Her short brown hair was laced through with blond streaks and was plastered against her head by the metal-and-strap face brace. She looked about forty or so, pleasantly plump with a round face that had probably been oval three or four kids ago.
“My father told me about your son.” She looked at him for a long torturous time, then said, “So have you changed your mind and come to kill me and my family?”
Carl was silent. He wanted to apologize, but he knew there weren’t enough words in the universe that would make her forgive him for what he’d done to her.
“Well?” she hissed as she watched him examine her brace. “Are you pleased with your handiwork?” She looked up at him because she was half a head shorter. He could tell she was afraid, but she stood there, not moving or trembling.
Finally, he could take the silence no longer. He looked away. The sight of her laying on the floor of the steel vault, her face a bloody mess, haunted him. All because he wanted revenge on her father, Aaron McGrath.
“No,” he said quietly. “I’m ashamed.” His voice cracked and her eyebrows rose in surprise. It clearly wasn’t the reaction she was expecting.
“Then why are you here? We’re no threat to you.”
Carl heard a toilet flush and a few seconds later Todd reentered the family room. As soon as he saw Carl, he looked quickly at the couch to see that the kids were safe. He stepped quickly around the long couch and the coffee table, passing in front of the fireplace, and froze when he saw the gun in Carl’s grip, pointed at the floor.
“What the hell is this?” he demanded. “Haven’t you done enough?”
Carl wagged his arm a bit, lightly slapping the gun against his leg in warning when it appeared Todd was going to try to be a hero. He was a big guy, but he was soft. He was a homebody, a family guy, a normal guy. At the sight of the gun, he stayed where he was. Anita reached out and laid her left hand on Carl’s right forearm.
“Please don’t hurt my family. Please.” She paused for a moment, and Carl thought her breath smelled like buttered popcorn. He glanced over her right shoulder and saw a big bowl of the stuff dead center of the coffee table. She continued. “It’s me you want. I’ll go willingly. Just don’t hurt them.”
Anita’s eyes watered as she pleaded, but Carl took a deep breath to steady himself and to get rid of the guilt.
“Sista, if I’d come here to kill someone, they’d be dead already.” He considered how to explain his purpose there, but opted for the truth. “Your father is in trouble, and some bad men are coming after you and your family.”
Anita took her hand from his arm and made a croaking sound that would have been a laugh of ridicule if the brace weren’t keeping her mouth mostly closed.
“Bad men?”
“Okay,” Carl said. “Worse men.” She looked like she was going to argue, but he held up a hand to silence her, speaking loud enough for everyone to hear. “Look, President Mallory’s daughter was kidnapped by a man that looked like me, so Aaron and his people thought it was me. That’s how all this started.”
He felt somewhat vindicated that McGrath had confessed his error to his daughter, if not to him. “There are powerful people in our government and in the Mexican government behind the kidnapping, and your father and I are mixed up in this mess. Those people want you and your kids dead—I don’t know why—so I want you alive. It’s as simple as that. So you can come with me and live, or you can stay here and die. And don’t take all night thinking about it.”
Todd said, “How the hell do you expect us to trust you after what you did to us, to her?”
“Your trust is irrelevant,” Carl said. “I’m leaving here in sixty seconds. Live or die?”
He packed his Glock into the shoulder holster Merc Three had modified to accommodate the suppressor. He pulled the key to his SUV from his left pant pocket.
“Yo, kid. You know how to drive?” The teen nodded, so Carl tossed him the keys. “At the end of the alley and to the right is a late-model SUV with dark tinted windows and faded white paint. Drive it up the alley and stop right beside the gate.” Carl thumbed over his shoulder. “Wait for us there, but do not use the horn.”
Anita and her husband and her son all looked at each other. Finally, she and Todd both nodded and their son ran through the open patio door.
Carl said to the adults, “Bundle up the kids in coats and let’s go. Right now!”
The parents jumped into motion and in half a minute the two twin girls and the toddler had hats and gloves and coats on. They all looked like a family getting ready to go out and play in the snow, except there was no snow outside. Just freezing cold.
Anita said, “Todd, grab as much food and water as you can carry.”
Carl shook his head. “Negative on that. I have emergency supplies in the car. And no cell phones or laptops or tablets or iPods. All those electronic gadgets can be tracked. And no ID cards or wallets or credit cards or ATM cards. If for any reason you get stopped by police and they enter you into their computer, the bad guys—the worse guys—will instantly know where you are because all your accounts are probably already flagged.”
Carl hustled them out into the back yard where he heard the SUV idling in the alley. He held Todd back and told him to unfasten the propane tank from the grill, open the cock, and toss the tank near the fireplace.
“I’m not leaving you alone with my family, you bastard.”
Carl just grunted at him. “Fine. Get in the car and I’ll torch the house. When the worse guys get here and your house is on fire, it will take them some time to discover that you’re not inside. It might give us a decent head start.”
Carl pulled a thick envelop from his inner jacket pocket and handed it to Todd. Todd just stood there while he set about disconnecting the propane tank.
“Jesus!” the man said, rifling through the hundred dollar bills. “How much is in here?”
“Fifty thousand. There’s more in the car. Because from now until it’s safe, you can’t go to your bank or do any kind of online banking or withdrawals of any kind. You have to stay completely off the grid.”
Todd walked backward toward the rear gate. “What’s to stop me from just driving off and leaving your ass here?”
“Because I know how to stay off the grid and you don’t.” He heaved the heavy metal canister to the patio door. “Without my help, the
men looking for you will find you in less than a day.”
Carl opened the valve and heard the satisfying hiss of escaping gas. He turned the canister onto its side and rolled it across the carpeted floor toward the fireplace. He and Todd Chapman ran to the gate.
The explosion was less than dramatic. There was merely a slight whoosh as the escaping gas ignited. Because the patio door remained wide open, the overpressure wave from the mild explosion easily escaped the house without blowing out any windows. Most of the family room caught fire immediately, and Carl knew the whole house would be engulfed within minutes.
Todd jumped into the front passenger seat and Carl jumped into the first row behind him and his son. When he pulled the door closed behind him, he found himself thinking the car looked more like a family minivan than an SUV. There was an uncomfortable moment when Carl realized he had landed himself on the bench seat next to Anita. Her twin six-year-old daughters occupied the rear bench seat.
The teen looked back at him from the driver’s seat and said, “Where to?”
Carl said, “I’ll drive. Let’s you and I trade seats.”
He didn’t want to take the chance on getting stopped by cops for letting a teen driver with no ID handle the car. Besides, he needed to get away from Anita. His guilt was almost unbearable.
Todd said, “So where are we going?”
“To Albuquerque,” Carl said. “I have to save another woman who wants to kill me even more than you do.”
Chapter 36
0005 hours MST Saturday
Albuquerque, NM
Carl pulled the SUV over two blocks east of Cummings’s house in East Downtown Albuquerque just past midnight. He’d taken a two-hour detour east of Santa Fe, then went south, ending up on I-40 some thirty miles east of Albuquerque. Back in Albuquerque, he wound around the residential streets until he was certain no one was trailing him. He stopped the car northeast of Broadway and Central, left the engine running, and gave Todd Chapman specific instructions. Then he took off on foot.
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