The Wrong Man (Complete 3-Book International Thriller Box Set)

by Fritz Galt

  He found a box of waterproof matches and lit a wick. The yellow glow lent warmth to the bare room as dusk approached.

  He glanced out the window. The storm was picking up, but before dark, he wanted to find Yacht House where presumably the al-Qaeda infiltrators would take refuge.

  His ski jacket hadn’t proven effective against the driving rain. Thank God he found raincoats, one black and one yellow, hanging on a peg by the door. He pulled on the black raincoat, then headed out into the fresh, pine-scented rainfall.

  The island was no larger than a couple of football fields, but the old growth forest was thick and wherever the other cottage was located, he couldn’t see it from Ferrar’s place. He had noticed a second, longer dock on the near side of the island upon their approach. He would head back in that direction.

  He decided to pick his way through the forest rather than risk exposure on the rocky shoreline. Eventually, he reached a clearing. There he made out the dim outline of a two-story house. Two wires, one telephone and the other electrical, ran toward the house, but no lights were on.

  During a brief lull in the downpour, he was able to survey the grounds in greater detail. There was a fine view out to the dock from the house’s wraparound porch. The chairs on the porch were neatly stacked on top of each other. It appeared that the terrorist group hadn’t yet arrived with the bomb.

  He returned to Boat House along a different route, a path that followed the western, landward rim of the island. There appeared to be no other buildings on the island. The land bridge to the mainland was impassable, completely awash in waves.

  After living for twenty years in the beehive of Northern Virginia, he suddenly felt quite alone.

  Darkness had hit U.S. territorial waters off Maine, and Tray Bolton began navigating the commandeered ferry by dead reckoning. Battling heavy seas, he followed a broken string of lighthouse signals along the shore.

  “Are the containers secure?” he shouted to the men below deck.

  “Both secure, sir,” an Arabic-accented voice reported weakly.

  “How about my briefcase?”

  “All fine, sir.”

  “Well, keep them dry.”

  Landlubbers. The Arabs in his group came from desert regions. He stood straight behind the helm, driving the ferry forward against the waves with a proud smile. He was at home on the sea.

  Shortly after midnight, the lights of Bar Harbor appeared, just where he predicted he would find them. He was within minutes of his destination.

  He shouted down the stairs, “Look lively, down there.”

  He was greeted by sick groans and green faces.

  “We’ll hit American shores in a few minutes.”

  The men were silent. Their relief was palpable, eclipsed only by a hushed awe.

  They pulled up to a long, weathered pier that stretched far out from a dark and mysterious chunk of land.

  They had landed on Beaver Tail Island.

  Bolton ducked below and grabbed his briefcase. Then he mounted the steps again to the upper deck and leaped onto the pier.

  There, he teetered awkwardly on his sea legs. He spread his feet wide on the unmoving planks for balance.

  “Welcome to my island, lads. Tie her up.”

  Four men jumped off and landed beside him, their clothes soaked in vomit. They staggered about, gathering and fastening ropes by flashlight.

  “This is my home,” Bolton continued, inhaling the pine-scented wind that whipped in his face.

  He slapped the last man on the back.

  “Welcome to the US of A.”

  The man wretched into the sea.

  Chapter 13

  Dawn broke cold and stormy on Beaver Tail Island.

  Deke Houston hadn’t slept well all night, having woken up repeatedly to check that his two automatic pistols and short-barreled rapid-fire assault rifle were fully loaded and that the rounds were chambered.

  The fact that there was no lock on the cottage door didn’t help.

  Giving up on sleep around six in the morning, he shoveled down some dry cereal and drank half a carton of apple juice.

  A mug of hot coffee would feel good in his hands, but scouting out the island would have to take precedence.

  Strapping on his gun holsters, he created a fairly intimidating spectacle. He just hoped that there were no unsuspecting vacationers on the island that day.

  He pulled on the black raincoat and stepped outside.

  Suddenly, a bullet whacked the door, ripping it out of his hand.

  “Holy crap.”

  He fell to his knees and rolled back inside the cottage.

  More bullets tore the door to shreds.

  Reaching to one side, he withdrew the assault rifle from under his arm. When the firing stopped, he rolled back toward the shattered door and unleashed a spray of bullets toward the source of the gunfire.

  No cries resulted. No one ran away.

  Was there a back door? He turned around. No. Only the front door. He was cornered.

  Then he smelled fire. He glanced around the cottage. Had one of the oil lamps caught the curtains on fire?

  It smelled like burning wood, but he hadn’t built a fire in the fireplace. Then he saw smoke drifting down from the open rafters. Rain spat against flames. Suddenly the awful truth sank in. Someone was burning down the cottage.

  During the night, the terrorists must have arrived, and they were smoking him out. Perhaps they thought he was Ferrar. Had Ferrar set him up?

  Just then, he heard a jingle by his leg. His cell phone was ringing.

  Still prone on the floor, he rolled back into the dimness and reached for his phone. “What is it?” he whispered. He couldn’t believe he was taking a phone call in the middle of a gunfight.

  “This is Ferrar,” a voice said against an airy whistle.

  “Ferrar, what the hell did you sent me into?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Okay? If you call burning down your cottage and spraying me with bullets as I try to escape okay, then I guess you could say I’m okay.”

  There was silence on the other end.

  Deke cried, “Are you coming, or not?” Maybe Ferrar was approaching by boat at that very moment.

  “I’m in the air heading your way,” Ferrar said.

  “The air. Like what air? Overhead in a helicopter, or drinking martinis on a jetliner?”

  “More like Bombay Gin. You’re on your own for now.”

  “For God’s sake, don’t abandon me here.”

  “I’m on my way. Don’t worry about that. Listen, there’s no place to hide in the house. You’ll have to get yourself into the woods and hope they don’t stalk you down.”

  “Ferrar, this was not my idea of a vacation.”

  He switched off his phone and turned off the power. How could he worry about conserving the battery’s life when his own life was in peril?

  No, he wasn’t worrying about batteries. He just didn’t want to give away his position by receiving another damned phone call.

  He grabbed a kitchen chair as a shield in one hand and clutched his rifle in the other and kicked the front door open.

  A bolt of pain shot up his leg.

  He launched himself toward the nearest stand of trees, hobbling some ten yards across a weedy clearing.

  Gunfire followed just behind him as he ran.

  Spruce needles and chipped bark flew around his head as he was swallowed up by the woods. The gunfire sounded like two assault rifles or submachine guns unloading their entire magazines on him. For a moment, their mechanical chattering drowned out the rain.

  Then a lightning bolt streaked from the sky. A tremendous thunderclap split the air. He stopped. His face streaming with freezing rain, he picked out the charred scent of burning wood.

  The smoke was too dense to come from the fire on the roof of Ferrar’s cottage. Glancing around in the mist, he felt sparks land on his hood. The lightning had struck the tree just above him.

  An
other clap of thunder rolled higher in the sky.

  Maine sure had intense electrical storms. That and the gunfire mitigated against Maine as a retirement place.

  He leaned forward on his sore leg and kept moving. As long as he stayed ahead of his assailants, he was safe. But on such a tiny island, he couldn’t avoid them forever.

  And wasn’t he supposed to be eliminating them?

  The last leg of Ferrar’s trip, from Montreal to Bangor, Maine, seemed to take forever. The mid-sized, commercial jetliner battled heavy turbulence the entire flight, and Deke’s frightened voice still rang in his ears.

  When the aircraft finally touched down in Bangor with a wet skitter, the passengers let out a cheer. The ailerons and flaps stood straight up as the pilot fought to bring the plane to a halt before the end of the runway.

  After a long complaining whine, the brakes finally took hold, the plane fishtailed and they came to a stop.

  He closed his eyes. There would be a long taxi to the terminal. Then Customs and Immigration clearance. It could take an hour before he was in a rental car heading out on the forty-five-minute drive down to Bar Harbor.

  On the way to the terminal, the plane passed several hangars with private seaplanes. One of those would be perfect.

  Forget the formalities of immigration and customs. The moment the jet’s hatch opened, he jumped out. His feet hit the tarmac at a full gallop.

  He raced against a gale-force wind to the first hangar.

  There he found a man in a glass booth that served as both an office and a warming shed.

  “Get me one of these planes, quick,” Ferrar said, reaching for his Federal Government identification card. “I’m with the Central Intelligence Agency, and we’ve got al-Qaeda terrorists smuggling ashore.”

  “Al who?”

  “Al-Qaeda. You know, Osama bin Laden.”

  “Oh, boy,” the man said with a hoot. He flipped a set of keys to Ferrar. “Take the second plane. It’s fully fueled. But watch out, it’s kind-er tight on the turns.”

  Ferrar slipped under the first plane’s fuselage and reached for the door of the second, a J3 Piper Cub with water-landing pontoons.

  “I wouldn’t try to land on the wah-ta in this kind-er weath-a,” the man called. “That’s a hundred doll-as an hou-a.”

  Ferrar gave him a thumbs up, then slipped on the lap belt and shoulder harness.

  “The CIA wouldn’t happen to use credit cahds now, would it?” the man shouted.

  Ferrar shook his head and gunned the engine to life.

  “How about a down payment, mist-a?”

  Ferrar closed the door. He looked around the cabin while the propeller gained speed. A diver’s wetsuit hung from a hook. Fishing tackle lay neatly arranged in the rear.

  The man shrugged and returned to the warmth of his office.

  The propeller whipped up the air until it was a dim, white blur. Then he released the brake and the plane started bouncing across uneven asphalt. He headed for the nearest end of the runway.

  He switched on the radio and pressed the microphone switch. “This is a Piper Cub requesting immediate emergency clearance for takeoff.”

  “What’s your call number, Piper Cub?” came back an authoritative voice.

  He glanced back at the wings just outside his window. “A1045,” he read aloud.

  “Roger that. A1045, you have clearance to take off, but you-a heading with the wind. You might want to work you-a way to the oth-a end of the runway first.”

  “I would if I had time,” he muttered off radio.

  He blew down the runway. Gusts buffeted him from behind, driving his nose hard into the ground. A strong downdraft pressed on him as he approached a ten-foot-high fence. He yanked up on the stick, struggling to keep the wings level. Out his window, his ailerons pointed straight downward. The nose popped up in a near stall.

  He threaded in the throttle to full speed and pushed down on the elevators at the tail. For a few seconds, the Cub hung nearly motionless, carried along by the wind.

  Seeking lift, he glanced down at his indicator panel. Ground speed was a hundred miles an hour. Air speed was half of that.

  He turned the plane hard to the right. Thank God it was “kind-er tight on the turns.” He found himself in a strong headwind, with all the lift he needed to fly to the moon. But none of the speed.

  He dipped the nose down and plunged toward the ground. Picking up speed, he lifted the nose gently and skimmed over the grass.

  With a light touch and a banking turn, he cleared the airfield once again.

  They didn’t teach that maneuver at flight school.

  Seeking a reasonable altitude, he skewed against the wind in the direction of Bar Harbor.

  The radio crackled. “A1045, that was some takeoff. Where are you headed?”

  “Out to sea,” he replied, intentionally keeping it vague.

  “Ah you crazy? The-a’s a Force Four gale wah-ning in effect,” the tower informed him.

  “I know.”

  “Don’t try to set down in the high waves out the-a.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Over and out.”

  After fifteen minutes of hustling from rock to rock in the forest of Beaver Tail Island, Deke had had enough.

  Yet, behind him came the constant rustle of branches, the thud of a pair of feet and the occasional report of a rifle followed by an errant bullet whistling past his ear.

  He had tried circling back to Bolton’s Yacht House, thinking that his pursuers would scarcely expect him to approach their own headquarters. But they hunted him down nonetheless.

  It was time for a new direction. Breathless and weary and his leg screaming in pain, he would be overtaken in seconds.

  He had to turn the tables on them and counterattack.

  Yacht House came into view, lights blazing inside. Beyond that, a large ferry-like ship was docked at the pier.

  If the men brought nuclear weapons, the bombs might still be onboard the ship.

  He charged into the open, heading toward the pier. Winded, he gulped icy air that nearly froze his lungs.

  As he sprinted, he sprayed the windows of Yacht House with a hail of bullets. His pursuers fired at him from the woods. Fragments of dirt bit the backs of his legs. These turned to wood splinters as he dashed down the pier.

  What the hell was he going to do?

  A reasonable swimmer, he might make it to shore despite the frigid water and high waves. But first, he had to destroy the bombs.

  With his rifle, he drilled several holes in the hull of the car ferry just below waterline. Then he hurdled over the side of the ship and emptied bullets down a staircase straight into the floorboards of the lower deck. Water gurgled into the ship.

  Against a veil of rain, the shadows of his pursuers ran toward him down the pier. He knelt behind the wheelhouse on the rocking ship and opened up on the men with his rifle. It was his first chance to get a look at them.

  The first was Middle Eastern, clean-shaven, agile and wearing a flak jacket. Deke’s first blast mowed him down, sending the man somersaulting into the waves.

  The next attacker was tall, bulky and blond and wore a red lumberjack’s shirt. He moved erratically, making it hard for Deke to lock on a target. The rain-obscured figure approached quickly, small sidearm fire spitting at Deke.

  Behind him, Deke was barely aware of a distant engine roaring over the water. It sounded like another attack.

  He rolled across the deck to avoid gunfire, and let another round loose against the assailant. This time he saw the terrorist’s face.

  It was Tray Bolton.

  The noise of the approaching engine grew too loud to ignore. He whipped out a pistol and turned around.

  A small prop plane was swooping down at him just a few yards above the waves.

  Ferrar saw Deke fighting a lonely battle on the deck of the ferry at the Yacht House pier. Over the water, wind drag increased considerably and he struggled just to keep aloft.

&nb
sp; He had but one hope of saving Deke.

  He unfastened his seatbelt and stood up behind the controls. He aimed the nose directly over the ferry at a lumberjack firing at Deke from the end of the pier.

  Then, he grabbed the diver’s wet suit that hung behind him, stepped back in the cabin, yanked upward on the safety latch and forced the exit open. Below him, water rushed by in a dizzying blur.

  He jumped.

  The roar of the plane diminished, replaced by the rush of wind in his ears, then the crash of waves below.

  Over his shoulder, he caught a glimpse of the plane skimming over the water straight for the pier. It sheared off the top of the ship and smashed into the end of the pier, creating a brilliant ball of fire.

  Straightening at the last moment into a human torpedo, he plummeted feet first into the surf. He hit it like a ramrod through a plate glass window. After shattering the surface, he was lost in a swirl of dark bubbles. It took a moment to regain his orientation, at last finding the surface, a churning mass of light above him.

  Holding his breath, he found the zipper to the wet suit and struggled into it. Icy water trapped in the rubbery suit, soon matched his body temperature. But his face and hands began to seize up in the blunt cold of the water.

  He propelled himself upward in the familiar, stinging salt water. Popping his hooded head above the surface, he gasped for air. The end of the pier was engulfed in flames from his full gas tank. The ferry hung off a single tether, its stern aflame and its upper deck listing precariously.

  Deke was balancing on the foredeck, looking around in wonder.

  Ferrar put his face down into the onslaught of waves and began to swim toward the orange glow. Panting, he reached the vessel. But above him, Deke was hard at work. More gunfire had erupted nearby from the shore, and Deke was responding sporadically, perhaps saving his ammunition.

  The ferry tilted even further as Ferrar grabbed a ladder with numb fingers and began to crawl up on deck.

  “Deke,” he yelled. “I’m here.”

  “They’re all over the place,” Deke yelled back. “I think I got two of ’em. One was Bolton.”