by Dan Ames
There had been no hesitation on his part. They weren’t here to talk to him, they were here to kill him, just like they’d probably done with Fackrell.
So he settled on the sniper’s forehead and pulled the trigger.
Then, he moved quickly.
The woman in the front of the house was a professional, too. And he figured he had very little time to reach her. His goal wasn’t to kill her. He wanted to take her alive and find out exactly who she was and why she was here.
He ran forward, but heard the sound of an engine revving and he knew he was too late. By the time he emerged from the shadows, he saw the taillights in the distance. He brought his rifle to his shoulder, and looked through the scope, but the car took the bend in the road and was instantly out of sight.
Tallon considered chasing after her, but discounted the notion.
He had a dead body to bury.
15
Kate kept her speed under control. This was a small town, and even though she wasn’t far from the Interstate, getting popped for speeding by an overeager local cop would not bode well.
She figured Michael Tallon wouldn’t chase her.
Even thinking the man’s name infuriated her.
Her mind had perfectly processed what happened. Unlike most targets, who always focused on the immediate danger, this one hadn’t. He’d been smart enough to ignore her, and seek out the greater threat.
William.
No one had ever done that to them before. They’d worked this scheme dozens of times and not once had anyone ever considered anything beyond Kate.
And now William was dead.
She knew that. There had been no time to check on him, the rifle report was all the proof she needed. Plus, William hadn’t called out to her, or come running.
William was dead. She knew that with one hundred percent certainty.
And with that knowledge came the certainty that she had no intention of trying to close out the contract on her own.
When a plan was in place and it failed as badly as it just did, improvisation was out of the question.
They had been misinformed on the character of the target. This Michael Tallon wasn’t ordinary infantry. Somehow, he’d spotted William, and taken him out.
Live to fight another day.
She would return the rental car at the airport, get a room, and wait for further instructions.
If her superiors recalled her, she would obey.
But not before she killed Michael Tallon.
16
Pauling was running late. She’d finished up with the locksmith who’d swapped out her door lock and double deadbolt system.
Combined with the brand-spanking new web-based security system Herb Watkins had installed, she felt like she was living in Fort Knox.
Without all of the gold, of course.
Which gave her a good feeling, but it also had cost her nearly half the morning. Still, she was able to lock the condo, get down to West 4th Street, grab a coffee to go and arrive at her office with plenty of time to accomplish something before the morning turned to afternoon.
As it turned out, someone had beaten her to the punch.
Down the hall from her office was a small foyer that served as a general waiting area for some of the other offices in the building. A woman had perched herself on the edge of a chair with a vantage point down the hall toward Pauling’s office.
When Pauling was in the process of unlocking the door, the woman rose to her feet and hurried toward her.
“Lauren Pauling?” the woman asked, while she was still ten feet away.
Pauling turned. “Good morning,” she said as she appraised her visitor. A small woman with short brown hair, eyebrows a touch severe, wearing jeans and a sleeveless blouse that showed off arms taut with muscle. Either an athlete or an intense workout fanatic, Pauling figured.
“Do you have a minute to talk?” the woman asked. “About my husband, Logan Brody? I believe he talked to you yesterday.”
Somehow, Pauling had known it was coming. A surprise client, an unwelcome visitor into her condo, and now this. It was all connected.
“Sure, come on in,” Pauling said. She opened the door and the lights came on, triggered by the motion.
“Can I get you anything to drink?” Pauling asked, raising her cup of coffee.
“Do you have a bottled water?”
“Certainly.”
Pauling pointed to the same visitor chair Logan Brody had used, then retrieved a bottled water from the small fridge in her office.
She came back into the visitor chair and handed the water to the woman.
“My name is Gina, by the way. Gina Brody. Although I’m pretty sure I’ll be using my maiden name before long.”
“Okay, Gina. What can I do for you?”
“First, can you confirm that my husband was here? That he hired you?”
Pauling smiled. “Well, if your husband had hired me, I wouldn’t be able to discuss anything with you. But, I wasn’t hired by any new clients yesterday, so that’s not an issue. However, I did have a surprise visitor in the morning.”
It was probably unnecessary, but Pauling always chose the conservative route when it came to confidentiality, and discussing clients – whether they were potential or actual clients didn’t matter.
“Okay, well, don’t let him hire you,” the woman said. “He’s batshit crazy.”
Gina Brody had big, brown eyes that were very expressive. Even her face was muscular as Pauling watched it twitch with emotion. The woman’s jaw was strong, and the muscles in her forearms were knotting and unknotting as she wrung her hands.
“Why do you say that?”
“Let me guess, he told you I was having an affair, right? With Joe Pritchard?”
“The name is familiar,” Pauling admitted.
Gina shook her head. “What a nut job. Joe, okay, is a high school friend. We’re not doing anything, other than talking about my crazy-ass husband.”
Pauling was trying to figure out how to extricate herself from the situation. She had quickly decided she wanted nothing to do with Logan and Gina Brody, and their sordid tale of marital dysfunction.
“Look, this type of case isn’t my specialty,” Pauling said. “I can give you a referral…”
“Wait, I’m not done,” the woman said.
Pauling sat back. She figured it wasn’t going to be easy.
“I’m not leaving Logan,” she said. “I’m escaping from him.”
Gina leaned forward, her shoulder muscles popping beneath the taut, tanned skin.
“He wants to kill me.”
17
Tallon worked quickly.
The first order of business was to get rid of the body and destroy the gun. Bullets, trajectories, rifling, all of those forensics would work against him.
For now, he slipped the dead man’s phone into his pocket.
As far as disposing of the body, Tallon had one big advantage.
He lived on Death Valley’s doorstep.
Nothing could destroy evidence faster than a good desert. And Death Valley was life at its most brutal.
So, under the cover of darkness, he loaded up the body of the would-be assassin, and drove out to a spot he’d discovered on one of his eighteen-mile runs. It was a crevice of sorts, with a bed of sand. He’d stumbled on it, literally, and nearly fallen to his death. So, naturally, he’d climbed all the way down and explored, instantly recognizing it as a difficult place to access and an even better location to dispose of something.
Like a body.
It was the kind of practical solution a man like Tallon consistently considered.
Now, Tallon dragged the stranger down to the bottom of the crevice, dug a nice deep hole and dropped the body into the pit. He shoveled the sand back over the corpse, and then rolled as many rocks and boulders as he could find on top.
After carefully erasing any sign of human presence, Tallon then carefully dismantled the dead man’s rifle an
d buried the different parts at separate locations in the desert.
By the time he got back home, it was morning and the first light was creeping along the face of his casita. Tallon made a fresh pot of coffee, threw his clothes into the fire pit, and made a roaring fire. Once the clothes were totally burned and any of the dead man’s DNA, he would bury the ashes. He would also have to thoroughly disinfect his vehicle and make sure there were no traces of anything to do with the dead man.
He’d already checked the dead man’s cell phone but it was a cheap, disposable model with a lock mode. Choosing the more conservative route, Tallon destroyed the phone in the fire. He would bury it along with everything else.
Tallon was contemplating the next move when his own cell phone buzzed.
He glanced down and saw it was Roy, the man who’d originally brought Carl Fackrell on board the mission in Colombia.
“Yo,” Tallon said into the phone.
“Tallon, how’s the desert?”
“Full of secrets. Where are you?”
“San Diego. Training.”
Roy had a smooth, radio announcer type voice that totally didn’t fit with the man. He was as brutal a commando as Tallon had ever seen, but when he spoke, it sounded like he was about to help someone win an all-expenses paid trip to Hawaii.
“So…Fackrell,” Tallon prompted.
“Yeah. Good dude. I went through some wars with him. You thinking of adding him to something you have going on?” Roy asked.
“No,” Tallon answered. He decided not to go into the details with Roy. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the man, it was just that he wasn’t comfortable talking about a murder over an unsecured phone.
Roy waited.
“What’s his background?” Tallon asked. He knew Roy would understand. The less said, the better.
“He’s a North Carolina boy,” Roy said. “Little town called Whitman Beach on the Outer Banks. Or, as the locals call it, White Man’s Beach.”
Roy said it with a trace of irony, but Tallon knew there was probably some truth to it.
“I’ve been there, and Fackrell loves that place, man,” Roy continued. “When he mustered out, that’s where he went. Last I heard, he had bought a fishing boat and the only thing he was hunting anymore were redfish. Even found himself a woman, from what I heard.”
Tallon thought about it.
“Anything else? No word if he was involved in anything new?” Tallon asked.
“Nope, just the opposite. Everything I heard said he was done. Out of the game. Then again, do any of us ever really leave?”
Good point, Tallon thought.
“Okay, I appreciate the help,” he said.
“Hey, if you run into him–” Roy thought better of where he was going with that statement and stopped himself. Even in a cryptic phone call, it was clear some sort of understanding of the situation had been passed along. “Ah, never mind. Take care, Tallon.”
“You too.”
He stood, stirred the logs in the fire pit around and pushed the ashes into a neat pile.
He would bury them before he left for Whitman Beach, North Carolina.
18
Charles June pondered the information before him.
William was dead.
Kate had taken a fallback position and was now waiting further instruction.
As project manager for the men in the wine cellar of the Falls Church mansion, June knew very well what was at stake.
The lives of many people.
Including his own.
In this line of work, both your job and your life were terminated when the company decided to eliminate you.
These kinds of mistakes were the very category that resulted in that kind of situation.
First, the leak.
Now, failure to ensure the leak had been permanently plugged.
And it was getting worse.
Safely ensconced in the study of his Georgetown brownstone, Charles June studied the bank of computer monitors in front of him. As a specialist in managing multiple missions, he had the ability to track several scenarios simultaneously which he was doing currently.
On the positive side, the issue with Michel Tallon was relatively minor. It was more of an insurance policy that was slowly being put into place.
It wasn’t the main mission.
Still, June was a perfectionist and he had a lot of people depending on him.
One computer screen showed the full file on Michael Tallon. His extensive experience and capability represented a worst-case scenario for Charles June.
Secondly, the ability to monitor civilian communication had resulted in the latest salvo from Independence Springs. Michael Tallon was planning to head to Whitman Beach, North Carolina, and pursue additional information regarding Carl Fackrell.
Strike two.
Whitman Beach was an outlier and not the epicenter of the project, but it was another way in for a man like Michael Tallon.
As always, obstacles present opportunities.
The debacle in Independence Springs made that location verboten. The small town of Whitman Beach, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, was the perfect place to wrap up this loose and very dangerous end.
June knew the assets at his disposal. William and Kate were more than just two of his very best contract killers. They were a very tight team, a case where the sum was greater than the parts.
Of the two, Kate was far and away the more dangerous and vicious. If June had to choose between them, he would have chosen Kate.
So, in a sense, he had come out of it all with a positive.
Within minutes of tapping on his keyboard, Charles June had determined and executed his next plan of action.
Kate would be joining Michael Tallon in Whitman Beach.
And there, the problem would be terminated, once and for all.
19
Tallon landed in Raleigh, North Carolina, picked up his rental, a 4 x 4, and headed east for the Outer Banks. He’d slept on the plane, grabbed a cup of coffee, and now felt energized. He’d disposed of everything he’d needed to back at his place, and locked the place up tight. Tallon had also felt the need to let the local cops know he was taking a quick trip to the east coast in case they had any questions.
Now, as he cruised along the highway in North Carolina, his mind wandered. He’d visited the area a couple times in the past, having been stationed very early in his career in Norfolk, Virginia, which was just a few hours north of the Outer Banks.
From Raleigh, he headed east on Highway 64 through towns like Rocky Mount, Tarboro and Jamesville until he crossed over an inlet called Alligator River. It was a wide body of water, with a marina to the north, and surrounded by a wildlife refuge. It was a sparsely populated area, with a lot of four-wheel drive vehicles equipped with fishing rod holders on the grill, or behind the cab. Along the highway, it felt like vintage America, in some ways. Old-fashioned motels, diners and crab shacks.
It was a rustic kind of area, and Tallon remembered a buddy from the military who’d been from eastern North Carolina and used to talk about a cousin who had a moonshine still up in the woods. Moonshine and illegal stills were very much alive in remote, eastern North Carolina, and Tallon could see why.
Some areas were thick and swampy, with the occasional stretch of hills. But locals were probably tight-knit, and the cops would have a challenge operating without notice. Plus, the population seemed sparse. Not much traffic, the little towns almost appeared deserted.
It was a little bit like going back in time.
He crossed over the Alligator River, and the road descended onto the Outer Banks. The Outer Banks are a series of barrier islands, over two hundred miles long, that parallel the entire east coast of North Carolina, as well as parts of Virginia. The islands are very narrow, in some cases down to a few hundred feet wide. The land is dotted with giant beach homes, most on stilts, with stunning views of the Atlantic Ocean.
In other parts of the area, small homes
on the inlet side, without access to water, are modest.
Tallon made his way to Whitman Beach. It was a decent-sized town with a main street, and multiple neighborhoods. Businesses seemed to be doing well, and Tallon even saw a few office buildings with signs advertising financial services.
Roy had told him that there was a bar Fackrell had mentioned that was his favorite local watering hole. So after checking into a hotel room on the beach – Wayfarer Inn – Tallon dumped his gear and went to the bar.
It was called To The Gills and Tallon appreciated the reference to the ocean and its contents.
From the outside, it was a long, narrow building all by itself, with some trucks, motorcycles and a few cars parked out front.
An American flag was in one of the windows. In the corner of another one was a rebel flag.
Tallon wondered if it was going to be that kind of bar.
Inside, it was dark and smelled of cigar smoke. There was a long bar that ran the length of one side of the space, and some tables and chairs scattered haphazardly everywhere else. There was one pool table, a foosball table and a jukebox. At the moment, a country song was playing that involved dirt roads, beers and trucks.
As it was nearing happy hour, the bar was surprisingly full. At least two dozen patrons, mostly male, with a few women here and there. Predominantly white people, a few tattoos, and plenty of leather.
Tallon made his way to the bar where he saw the source of the cigar smoke. The bartender was an older man, with a thick head of hair and beard, and he had a thick stogie stuck into the corner of his mouth. His T-shirt was old and faded, with an STP logo in the center.
“I’ll take a draft,” Tallon said, sliding onto an unoccupied bar stool. There were three empty spaces, and then down the line, the rest were taken.
The bartender slid the beer in front of him and Tallon threw a twenty onto the bar.
“Have you seen Carl Fackrell lately?” Tallon asked. “We served together and he talked about this place all the time.”
