Mystery: Satan's Road - Suspense Thriller Mystery (Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Suspense Crime Thriller)

by Theo Cage

  “We would need armored vehicles, probably a squadron of tanks to make a dent in their defenses. This would, of course, lead us to the other problems.” I knew what she meant. Any military or Federal action against these people would create a media circus.

  “Parkhurst is the communications center for the Soldiers of Patmos movement. They have a state-of-the-art TV studio with high-speed data links to all the major news services. The second we step or roll on Parkhurst soil, the world is going to know about it. They will control the media spin; their anchors will be covering the evening news. It will be the greatest media disaster the American presidency has ever seen. It will make Waco look like a Sunday picnic.”

  “And finally, as if we need to know more, we have a warehouse full of circumstantial evidence linking the Parkhurst Foundation to dozens, if not hundreds, of national companies. Two of America’s key military suppliers are on that list. A telecommunications company. A major world bank. If our intelligence comes even close to the truth on this one, just threatening to attack Parkhurst could cause a whole universe of grief to come down hard on Congress, on our Foreign affairs offices, our multi-nationals. Shit, even the Dow would be affected."

  "How did this happen?"

  "It’s taken decades. The FBI had an interest in Parkhurst in the nineties when it was linked to international right-wing terrorism. Boot camp for Nazis, they used to call it. We should have acted then, but the power they had over the media in 1995 was a significant setback. They accused the Jews of controlling the press yet that's exactly the power they use to bury commentary on their nutty actions."

  I knew we were driving into very hostile territory with very little preparation and next to no backup. If Parkhurst was planning a global assault, our only response had to be tactical. Maybe a small incursion. Maybe we could kill their power and slow them down a little. I was leaving the big strategy stuff to the Fibbies. I was just here to observe and maybe get a chance to confront Gideon. That was all I wanted.

  Suddenly our car was filled with light. We had been moving down I-95 with very little company, zipping mostly past transport trucks. It was like another car or truck had appeared out of nowhere behind us, closing in on us at a tremendous rate. I jumped up when I saw the headlights bearing down. I could feel the adrenaline rush.

  “Some idiot is passing us,” Jann growled, squinting into the glare. The light from behind filled the darkness of the car and then crawled alongside of us. Then the driver’s window exploded.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Seconds after the side window shattered, I heard three more shots fired in quick succession. I was reaching for my holster when I felt a burning sensation tear along my scalp. I was lucky. A bullet grazed me. Then I was covered in a spray of hot blood. I spit it out and leaned forward to get out of range.

  Jann, who was driving, was now leaning forward into the steering wheel, her hands loose at her sides. I grabbed for her, one hand going to the steering wheel where her head was rolling loosely. I could see now that at least one shot had caught her on the back of her head, not enough to throw her sideways, but enough to potentially kill her.

  I could feel the car going sideways. I took the wheel as best I could, her dead weight against it and my eyes full of blood. We were going over 120 when fired on. The car was slowing, but it was still going fast enough to finish the job. Jann’s feet were still on the accelerator. I had an image of hitting the guardrail at speed. Would we flip? I tried to hold the wheel steady, but still felt momentum pushing us towards Jann’s body, now slumped against the jagged glass of the driver’s window, her neck at an impossible angle.

  Wiping my eyes quickly, I realized the entire windshield was covered in a fine spray of blood and brain matter and I couldn’t see any headlights to guide me.

  Then I felt the car grind into the side rail on my right. The car was ricocheting off the steel guardrails, sparks lighting up the darkness off the passenger window. I reasoned that this was the right tactic; let the car grind out its forward velocity on the rails.

  Then the car veered away from the right lane suddenly. The road had curved away to the right plowing the heavy Crown Vic into the center of the two-lane highway.

  I lost the wheel – felt the momentum of the car change – heard rubber squealing on pavement. Then the big car rolled. I was pinned by the seat belt as I felt the roof impacting the road, glass popping out everywhere, fragments exploding around me. The only light I could make out now was the blue glow from the dash spinning around. Then everything slowed. A buzzing sound filled my ears. Everything faded.

  I came to, guessing I had blacked out for only a few seconds. I was hanging upside down in the dark, caught in the webbing of the shoulder restraint, the belt cutting deeply into my right shoulder. I still had Jann’s blood in my eyes, but couldn’t reach up to my face to wipe the congealing liquid away. Above the ticking sound of the cooling engine all I could hear were distant footsteps somewhere behind the car on the asphalt.

  Someone was walking slowly towards the upside down Crown Vic.

  “Hyde? Are you alive?” I tried to reach for my gun, but my arm was still snagged in the webbing and felt numb and unresponsive. Something had raised my personal alarm bell. I stopped moving then, recognizing the voice. He had a very distinct gravelly drawl. It was Clay Roberts. A retired D.C. vice cop. I’d worked with him on a number of cases.

  “You might as well answer me if you’re in there, Hyde. Any second now a semitrailer is going to round that turn back there, and you know how those guys drive this time of the night. Good thing is you won’t know what hit you.”

  I was filled with rage, mostly at myself. Was Roberts the one who had come after us while I had been dozing in the front seat? How did he know where I was? What the hell was going on? I wanted to strangle the traitor with my bare hands. Then I realized I couldn’t see Jann anymore. She hadn’t been wearing a seat belt and may have been thrown clear. I didn’t think she could have survived the gunshot wound, but I had seen stranger things in my career. I needed to get medical help for her.

  “Get me the fuck out of here, Clay. We have a wounded FBI agent. I need to call an ambulance.”

  Roberts sounded closer, but I could tell he was moving with caution. “Sorry, Hyde. You should have left well enough alone. You were always poking your nose into other people’s business. Someone wants you gone in a big way, and they have serious coin on the table. I’m surprised there aren’t a dozen hit men here trying to take you out.”

  “What’s next after this, Clay? Check out the Casino at Carson on the way home? Have a nightcap? Try to forget that you killed two cops?” I still couldn’t feel my arm. And even if I got my gun out I wasn’t sure what I could do, half blind and a useless arm.

  Roberts grunted crudely – a laugh without passion.

  “My number came up. There are no options here. If I don’t take you out, I’m next. So I don’t have a choice.” Roberts was closer now, his voice hesitant. I could feel his caution. He couldn’t be totally sure of my condition so he was crabbing his way towards the wrecked vehicle. “You stepped in it, Greg. And now I get the sorry job of cleaning up.”

  “Well, good work, man. You killed an FBI agent. And what did she have to do with any of this? You gonna be the one to tell her family, you pathetic sack of shit?” I spit this out; frustrated at the ridiculous position I was in, hogtied and unable to make out anything but shapes – thinking of Jann lying in a heap by the side of the road, waiting for me, wondering why I had deserted her. Again.

  Clay had stopped walking. I sensed he was close, leaning down to see better, probably to take better aim. I had worked my gun out of the holster, but the range of movement I had was so narrow. I couldn’t see how I could make any use of the Glock to protect myself.

  Robertson yelled, his voice cracking. “Hyde, the plan is to burn your car and I don’t have a lot of time. There’s no way I could live with leaving you to fry in there. So I’m going to put you out of your
fucking misery. Speak to me Hyde. I got a deadline. Or do you want to just burn?”

  I let out a groan; unable to think of anything to say that would give Roberts pause. I tried to relax my body as much as possible, hoping I could slip through the bindings quicker. I felt no change.

  I spat out blood, Jan’s or mine; I couldn’t be sure. I wanted to scream. “I’m hurting, man. I need an ambulance.”

  Clay moved up to the passenger side – his gun drawn. I could see his shadow on the road from the moonlight. I thought I heard the distant rumble of a semi from the north, coming fast. I looked over through the narrow gap between the roof and passenger opening and saw Roberts’s arm move away from his body, his gun coming up. I finally had the muzzle of my police Glock 17 pressed against the passenger door. The steel didn’t matter to the Glock. When I was a rookie in training, they had us shoot at an engine block to demonstrate the killing power. The bullets went through the iron like it was balsa wood. I fired once at Roberts, then again, watching the shadow jerk, then fold in on itself and finally collapse to the pavement.

  Roberts’s face came into view, his eyes open, his cheek pressed into the rough surface of the highway. I had zero remorse. Fuck him I thought. Crooked cops made me want to lose my lunch.

  For a few seconds, I could actual hear crickets buzzing from the ravine below. Clay’s shrunken body was then suddenly lit with powerful headlights. I felt the whole interior of the Crown Vic fill with light again and heard the scream of air brakes.

  The truck I couldn’t see, only feel and hear, roared toward me. Then I heard the shudder of wheels hopping on pavement and the squeal of air brakes and could feel through the frame of the car, the truck beginning to lift off the road. The headlights raked across the car and then were yanked off into the shadows. The driver had evidently lost control, and the cab was turning and rolling.

  Seconds before impact, everything went dark again as the trucks trailer blotted out the moon.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Kam sat upright with his fingers digging into the leather arm rests. He was a nervous flyer. Maybe he thought holding tighter would reduce his chances of flying off into the clouds if the fuselage snapped in half, something he dreamt about once and couldn’t get out of his head. If Tamara were here, she would be holding his hand right now. Or giving him a painful kick in the ankle to smarten him up. He really needed that kick.

  He noticed for the first time the total absence of airsickness bags. Great. He’d never come close to using one on a commercial flight, but the presence was still somehow reassuring. Why a small eight-passenger jet wouldn’t stock them made no sense at all, considering the flight maneuvers they were capable of – or had already carried out. An expression came back to him from his time in Vietnam. This pilot loved the stick. He wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if he did a barrel roll before the flight was over, the pilot yelling to the passengers “Want to do that again?” Except he was the only passenger.

  The plane he was flying on was a Learjet 31A, about twenty years old, according to the pilot. Apparently totally upgraded and refitted last year. The last minute flight cost from Boston to Hanover County Airport in Richmond? Eight thousand dollars. That had maxed out Kam’s MasterCard. And no dinner or drinks included. He was so hungry he considered gnawing on the upholstery.

  Kam had no real plan going forward, but since he didn’t have the resources of the FBI, he felt a gnawing urgency to get to Parkhurst as soon as possible. He had “borrowed” the Rexall’s Lexus SUV to get to Cambridge, now parked in a long-term lot at Logan International in Boston. He had left a note back at their cabin – he just wasn’t sure if that excused auto theft. He had no cash, two credit cards, a broken watch and a driver’s license. The minute they asked him for his passport, he was finished. He figured his last remaining Visa card would get him to the gates of Parkhurst. He was trying to come up with a suitable story; some fabrication that would pry the gates open.

  His first thought, several nautical miles ago, was to trek across the countryside and find a side road in. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized that a thousand militia volunteers were not going to allow borders to go unguarded. Parkhurst would be at full alert Monday, anxious and keyed up for action. Kam didn’t want to be the first casualty of Gideon’ new world order.

  That left the front gates. While waiting for his flight to prepare for takeoff, he had used an Internet kiosk at the airport. The Parkhurst website had several photos; smiling people husking corn, modern tractors tilling fields, children playing in an apple tree. No razor wire, no automatic weapons. But Kam had taught a History course on cults at Boston U and had visited a farm in Kansas once that was owned by the Paulians, an end-of-days sect. They were very suspicious of strangers and security was a daily focus. You didn’t just walk into an active militia compound.

  From what he could tell, recruitment wasn’t voluntary. Jann Stone gave him the impression that everyone was handpicked by Gideon Lean. Kam wasn’t just going to knock on their front door and join up.

  Despite the nervousness he felt for his present circumstances, something else was nagging at him too. An alarm bell was ringing somewhere back in his subconscious, rallying for his attention. He could still hear Hyde’s voice warning him away from Parkhurst and that was causing him some guilt, but that didn’t explain the anxiety. Maybe it was the eight thousand dollars he had just spent on a ninety-minute one-way trip.

  Then it hit him. Damn. His credit card. He’d witnessed Chapertah get a phone call in his hotel room minutes before taking his life. They knew exactly where he was. Then Kaufmann, dying on the screen of his smart phone in the middle of their conversation. The SUV that came out of nowhere on his trip home, only minutes away from his home. And the soldier. Tommy. Showing up to rescue him at the last minute. How could they know exactly where people were? He’d heard that all cell phones made in the last few years had GPS chips in them. That explained most of the past few days. But he’d lost his phone in the lake. So he should be off their radar. That was until he used his credit card to book the charter. They had tried to kill him at least twice. So then, like a true amateur, he had disappeared by accident. Now he had given them everything they needed to track him down again. A credit card transaction. Captive on a small jet with a registered flight plan.

  They’d be there when he landed at Hanover County airport, he was sure of it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The militiaman, in the new silver-grey Dodge 2500, watched through binoculars as the Lear jet taxied towards the Hanover County fueling station. Usually a charter would roll up close to the passenger lounge first, but obviously with one lone passenger, the pilot had decided to save a step. This meant that O’Brien would have a longer walk across the tarmac, but this way he would be in the soldier’s sites the whole way.

  Following this enemy down the highway wouldn’t be as easy. There was relatively heavy traffic on Highway #1 on Monday mornings. With luck, he would find a relatively deserted length of road and erase the professor, and if necessary, the taxi driver as well. Then get back to the camp in time for the launch.

  Once the small jet stopped, the air door swung out and the pilot climbed down the stairs. He spoke briefly to the fuel jockey. Then he headed for the hanger.

  The soldier waited. What was O’Brien’s problem? What was taking so long? After several more minutes, he began to really worry. Failing this mission was not an option. He zoomed in again on the fueling jet, looking for activity behind the porthole windows. Then he saw some movement. Finally, a man dressed in casual pants and a golf shirt stepped into sight. But he was clearly too young to be the professor. This passenger looked to be in his early thirties.

  The militiaman cursed and slammed his fist into the dash. He was looking for an elderly man with white hair – exactly the description of the pilot. O’Brien must have switched clothes with the pilot.

  The soldier jammed the truck into gear and roared down the gravel road to
wards the entrance gate. But by the time he pulled up to the drop-off area, he knew he was too late. The foyer and waiting area were empty. The old guy had given him the slip.

  The militiaman was already dreading the rest of the day - and what unique punishment Gideon would have in store for him when he got back to base.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Kam, despite twenty-fours without sleep and a painful kink in his neck from trying to doze on the plane, felt pretty good.

  Moments before landing, Kam had come up with an idea. He needed about fifteen minutes out-of-sight from his trackers to pick up his rental car and get on the freeway. As they were taxiing in, he approached the pilot with his proposal – they trade clothes. The pilot was wearing a white shirt and dark blue slacks and was close to Kam’s height and build. But the airline’s pilot cap was what he was really after. Kam believed if he exited the jet wearing a pilot’s uniform and hat, that would distract anyone keeping an eye out for him for long enough to make a getaway.

  The pilot laughed when he first heard the strange request, but Kam felt he knew how to convince him. Despite the prestige, small airline pilots were not paid big money. Kam told him about Tamara and his trackers, then offered him $1000. And the pilot, Conner, agreed. They spent a few minutes working out the details of how Conner would get his clothes back and they shook hands.

  The big problem was Kam had no cash. There was an ATM in the airport, but Kam was afraid of even a short delay. So Kam tried a desperate lie. He adjusted the time on his wristwatch, so it appeared to be working, and showed the pilot.

  “I’m at the end of my wits. I lost my daughter years ago. This was her gift to me. It’s one of my most valued possessions. I’ll let you hold it until I get back. As security.”