Knockdown

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  The street was empty at the moment. At this time of day, most of the people who lived around here were at work.

  A short driveway led to a closed one-car garage. Jake and Barry walked past a mailbox with the name GLENNON on it and started up the drive toward a concrete walk, which jogged over to the tiny front porch.

  “Hold on a minute,” Barry said.

  “Something wrong?”

  “I want to send Hank another message.”

  Jake gestured toward the house and said, “You can just tell him whatever it is.”

  “Nah. Besides, I want a picture of the place.”

  Barry lifted the phone in his hand and snapped a picture of the pleasant little cottage.

  This was definitely strange behavior on his part, and as Jake realized that, he felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle. His uncle never did anything unless there was a good reason for it.

  Barry’s thumbs moved with the speed and efficiency of a millennial who’d been to Starbucks one too many times that day. As he typed in the message he was going to send, he spoke the words out loud. Maybe it was for Jake’s benefit, although Jake didn’t understand why.

  “Hey, buddy, nice place you have here. A far cry from that dump in Lisbon where we met.”

  Barry pressed the icon to send the message.

  Less than ten seconds later, the phone dinged, and Barry read the reply.

  “Thanks, come on in.” Barry’s thumbs flashed again with his response. “Just a second, I forgot something in the truck.” He inclined his head toward the pickup and said, “Give me a hand, Jake.”

  Still puzzled but sure now that something was wrong, Jake turned away from the house and followed Barry toward the pickup parked at the curb.

  The middle of his back crawled as if a target were painted on it—which might not be far from the truth.

  “Let me guess,” Jake said quietly. “You didn’t meet this guy in Lisbon.”

  “Not hardly,” Barry replied. “The first time we ran into each other was in Hawaii. I doubt if he’s ever been to Lisbon, or anywhere else in Europe.”

  “Somebody’s got a trap set for us in there. They realized that your friend was poking around in things he shouldn’t have been, and they’re guessing that he’s connected with you.”

  “That’s the way I sized it up when I realized those text messages I was getting were coming from his phone, but not necessarily from him,” Barry agreed.

  “What tipped you off?”

  Barry shook his head and said, “Nothing in particular. Just being careful. I should have checked before we ever got here. Maybe I’m getting too old for this life, Jake.”

  “I don’t believe that for a second,” Jake declared. “Think how much worse things would have been in El Paso if you hadn’t figured out what Saddiq was planning. And I’ll bet you’re right about what’s going to happen here, too.”

  “And soon,” Barry said grimly. “It could be they’re getting ready to strike any time now, and that’s why they want us out of the way.”

  “What are we going to do?” They had reached the pickup. Barry opened the driver’s door as Jake spoke. “Should we dive in and get out of here, maybe head straight to the train station?”

  “Hank may be in there, in the house,” Barry replied, “and there’s no telling what they might have done to him. I’m not going to just abandon him to animals like Saddiq’s men, or those cartel butchers, or those weasels from Washington, whoever it is that’s trying to ambush us.”

  Jake grunted and said, “That’s what I was hoping you’d say. How do we play it?”

  “Take your phone out, act like you got a call, and stroll on down the sidewalk while you’re pretending to talk. Wave your free hand around a little like you’re arguing with somebody. I’ll go on up to the front door, so they’ll be watching me. You can go around the house next door and cut through to the back, then come in that way.”

  “Why not do it the other way around? If you go up to the front door, you’re just asking for them to open fire on you through it.”

  “I don’t think so. I think they’ll try to get me inside before killing me so as not to attract any attention. But that’s the way we’re going to do it, anyway.”

  Jake looked at Barry for a second, saw the determination in his uncle’s eyes, and sighed and nodded.

  “All right,” he said. “I think I’m getting a call right now.”

  He took his phone out of his shirt pocket, pretended to thumb the screen, and held it to his ear.

  “Yeah, this is Jake,” he said. “Oh, hey, man, how are you? Were you able to find out that stuff I asked you about?”

  He strolled along the sidewalk away from the pickup as if distracted by the imaginary conversation.

  “See you inside,” Barry called after him, reinforcing the idea that neither of them was suspicious about the situation. Without turning around, Jake waved a hand in acknowledgment and continued walking away.

  Barry closed the pickup door and turned to the driveway, going up it again to follow the walk to the front porch. As he approached the door, every instinct in his body told him that he was being watched. He didn’t show it, though. Anyone observing him would believe that he was relaxed, not expecting trouble.

  Barry hooked his right thumb in the front pocket of his jeans so he could easily sweep his hand around to his back and pluck a Smith & Wesson 9mm from his waistband, where he had tucked it before getting out of the pickup. He raised his left hand and knocked on the door.

  A muffled voice called from inside, “Hey, come on in. It’s unlocked.”

  Barry reached down and turned the knob. He swung the door back and stepped across the threshold. He had never been here before, but his keen eyes instantly took in every available detail. He was in a foyer that turned into a hall running toward the back of the house. There was a small living room to his right; to his left was a wall with a few framed photos on it, and up ahead a door that opened into a dining room.

  Barry took another step into the foyer, and as he did, he rammed his shoulder against the door and drove it back against the wall, pinning the man who had been waiting behind it to ambush him. Barry had smelled the man’s rank scent as soon as he moved across the threshold.

  As he pinned the man with the door, he also reached behind him and snatched out the 9mm. Just in time, because another man appeared in the hallway ahead of him, swinging up a full-auto machine pistol.

  Barry triggered two swift shots before the would-be killer could bring the weapon to bear. The slugs punched into his chest and knocked him back a step but didn’t put him down. He was still a threat as long as the machine pistol was in his hands. Barry shifted his aim and drilled him between the eyes.

  That dropped the man to the hallway floor. The gun clattered down beside him.

  Barry kept his shoulder pressed hard against the door while he was taking care of the man in the hall, so the lurker behind it was still pinned against the wall. As soon as the man in the hall was down, Barry stuck the 9mm’s barrel around the edge of the door at head height and fired twice more.

  Then he stepped quickly away from the door. The man who’d been behind it collapsed, his head a bloody ruin, and his fall pushed the door toward Barry, who hooked it with his toe and kicked it shut.

  No need to risk any passersby glancing in here and seeing what was going on.

  He had three rounds left in the pistol, but a couple of extra loaded magazines were in his pocket. He advanced slowly toward the back of the house, tracking the gun from side to side as he did so.

  A man whirled out of the dining room and slashed a curved scimitar at his head.

  With his mouth wide open in a shout of rage and the scimitar clutched in a two-handed grip, he looked like something out of the Arabian Nights. Barry had just enough time for that thought before he put a bullet into the wide-open mouth and blew the back of the guy’s skull out.

  A gun thundered somewhere close behind Barry.
>
  He felt the heat of the bullet on the left side of his neck. It came close enough to leave a little burn, but that wouldn’t stop his momentum. Barry twisted around, saw another ambusher pointing a big revolver at him, and dropped to one knee as he fired twice. The bullets punched into the man’s gut and doubled him over.

  The man was trying to lift the revolver again, though, stubbornly doing his best to carry out his mission and kill this infidel. The slide on Barry’s gun was locked back, empty. He could have dropped the magazine and slapped another one in, but instead he used his right hand to scoop up the scimitar the last guy had dropped. As he came to his feet, Barry swung the curved blade over his head and brought it flashing down.

  The scimitar split the man’s skull, cleaving it in two almost down to its base. He collapsed in a loose-limbed welter of arms, legs, blood, and brains. Barry wrenched the blade free.

  The back door crashed open and Jake rushed in, the Browning held ready in his hands. He stopped short, staring at Barry, who stood there in the hall with an empty gun in one hand and blood dripping from the scimitar he held in his other hand. Jake exclaimed, “Good Lord!”

  “This may not be all of them,” Barry said. “We need to clear the rest of the house.” He added grimly, “And then we need to find Hank.”

  CHAPTER 53

  The rest of the house was clear of enemies, and Hank Glennon was in the garage.

  Perhaps surprisingly, he was still alive—but not for long.

  Glennon, a burly, mostly bald man with a fringe of reddish-gray hair around his ears, was tied onto a kitchen chair sitting in the middle of a large pool of blood.

  He had been worked over with a blade, obviously tortured for information. But some of the cuts had gone too deep, and he was on the verge of bleeding out.

  Somehow, he found the strength to lift his head and smile at Barry, though.

  “Knew you’d . . . be here,” Glennon rasped. “You get . . . those lousy . . .”

  “We got ’em,” Barry assured him.

  “I di’n’t . . . di’n’t tell’em . . . a thing.”

  “I know that, Hank. You always were a stubborn cuss.” Barry leaned closer, locking his gaze in on his old friend’s eyes and not seeing, for the moment, the damage that had been done to Glennon’s face. “They’re going to derail a train at the station, aren’t they?”

  “Dunno . . . what the plan is . . . lotsa new guys . . . working there . . . M-Middle Eastern . . . guys.” Glennon managed a hollow laugh. “It’s only that . . . so many new . . . at once? Made me . . . suspicious.”

  “What’s the busiest time at the station?” Jake asked.

  “That’s your . . . nephew . . . you told me about?”

  “Yeah,” Barry said. “He’s got the right idea. They’ll hit when they can inflict the most casualties.”

  “Six . . . six-twelve . . . train from . . . the city . . . always packed . . .”

  “Barry, it’s 6:03 now,” Jake said tensely.

  “I know. Hank, we’ll call 911—”

  “Don’t waste . . . even that much time . . . Just go . . .”

  Glennon’s head fell forward. The breath that eased out of him had a rattle of finality to it.

  “I’m sorry, Barry,” Jake said.

  “Time to be sorry later. We’ve already been here too long.”

  Barry was right about that. No matter how deserted the neighborhood appeared, there were bound to be people around, and they would have reported the gunshots inside Glennon’s house. The cops had to be on their way already.

  Jake didn’t hear any sirens when he and Barry left the house, but that didn’t mean anything. The responding officers could be running silent. They got in the pickup, Jake taking the wheel again. He drove off without seeming to be in a hurry because that would draw attention, too.

  But with every second that passed, his nerves grew tauter. The time for that crowded commuter train to roll in to the Babylon station was drawing steadily closer.

  Barry gave him directions to the station in a voice that showed the same strain Jake was feeling.

  “How far away are we?” Jake asked after several blocks and a couple of turns.

  “A mile, maybe two.”

  “And the traffic will be worse around the station. Barry, we’re running out of time.”

  “We’ll make it, we’ll make it—”

  The sudden roar of an explosion in the distance interrupted what Barry was saying.

  Barry grimaced and pounded the pickup’s dashboard with a fist.

  “It’s not time!” he said. “We still had a few minutes.” His face settled into bleak lines. “They jumped the gun for some reason. Maybe those guys who were waiting at Hank’s house were supposed to report back in, and the rest of the bunch panicked when they didn’t.”

  Jake’s foot came down harder on the gas pedal, and the pickup leaped forward.

  “Maybe we can still help,” he said.

  “Yeah, we don’t know how bad it is yet.”

  A ball of black smoke had begun to rise in the distance, though, so it didn’t look good. Jake didn’t need directions anymore. He just headed toward the scene of the obvious disaster.

  A fire truck came screeching around a corner ahead of them and straightened up to race in the same direction. Jake saw the flashing lights of other emergency vehicles. He and Barry were about to be surrounded by cops, a situation which normally they would have tried to avoid.

  Under the circumstances, though, it seemed unlikely that any of the law enforcement officers responding to what had to be an outpouring of desperate calls from the train station would pay any attention to them.

  They were fairly close—it looked like within three or four blocks of the smoke, which was even thicker and blacker now—when Barry suddenly leaned forward and said, “Turn around.”

  “What?”

  “Turn around!”

  Jake had no idea what was going on, but Barry usually knew what he was doing. Jake hit the brakes and hauled the pickup into a skidding U-turn after waiting a second for traffic going the other direction to clear.

  “What’s this about?” he asked his uncle as he started to accelerate again.

  “See that blue van up there, three cars ahead of us?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Follow it!”

  Jake sped up even more and said, “Sure, but why are we chasing it?”

  “When it met us going the other way, I noticed that it’s packed full of guys who look like they’d be friends with Bandar al-Saddiq. They seemed pretty excited about something, too. Giddy, almost.”

  Jake’s eyes narrowed as he glanced over at his uncle.

  “Most people would call that racial profiling,” he said.

  “Yeah, well, most people are full of crap these days, instead of the common sense that they used to have. If you’ve got a wolf snarling at you all the time, it doesn’t take much deep thought to realize that it means you harm. And if you’ve got a van full of men laughing when hundreds of people are dying, there’s something wrong.”

  Jake said nothing, which Barry seemed to take as disagreeing.

  “Just call it my gut,” Barry snapped. “My instincts haven’t led us wrong so far, have they?”

  Jake had to admit that they hadn’t. Barry had a remarkable track record for finding the bad guys. He’d always had that ability, going back for decades now.

  Jake worked his way through the traffic, gradually getting closer to the blue van. They were leaving the smoke behind now, and while it galled him not to be helping out at the scene of . . . whatever had happened back there . . . he had to admit that it might be more important at this point to catch the murderers responsible for it.

  The fact that they might be up there not far ahead of him, joyously celebrating their destruction and wanton slaughter of innocents, just made him want to catch up to them even more.

  If Barry was right and that van was full of terrorists, they were probably flush with th
e success of their attack and not that observant about what was going on around them. They might not notice that Jake was tailing them. He kept moving up until he was directly behind them.

  The road was two lanes each way, and up ahead at the next intersection was a traffic light that had just turned red.

  “Pull up beside them,” Barry said.

  Jake nodded. He steered the pickup into the left-hand lane, slowed down a little to make sure the light would catch him, and braked to a stop next to the van.

  The pickup was tall enough that Barry had no trouble looking into the van. He glanced over at the driver in apparent nonchalance. He could see the man in the passenger seat as well, and also a couple of men who leaned forward into the gap between the front seats to talk excitedly. They were young Middle Eastern men in their twenties, and all of them seemed extremely animated and happy. They were even exchanging high fives.

  Then the driver must have felt Barry’s gaze on him, because he looked over and an angry scowl replaced his grin. He said something quickly to the others, and they turned hostile stares toward Barry and Jake as well.

  Barry lifted his hand in a mocking wave as the light turned green. The van spurted ahead as the driver tromped the gas.

  “That’s them, all right,” Barry said.

  “We don’t have any proof of that,” Jake pointed out.

  “Fall back some and keep following them. Maybe we will.”

  Jake did as Barry said. Trailing the van brought them to an area along the sound, outside of Babylon, where there weren’t many houses. Sand dunes topped with coarse grass ran down to the water. A few old farmhouses and fishing cottages were visible here and there.

  The van turned off the highway onto a dirt road that led toward the water and one of those ramshackle old buildings. Jake and Barry cruised on past.

  “The next road you come to that leads toward the water, take it,” Barry said.

  “We’re going to sneak up and see what those guys are up to?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  Jake nodded. Half a mile farther on, another dirt road turned to the left, in the direction of Long Island Sound. From the lack of tire tracks, no one had driven along it for quite a while. Jake pointed the pickup along the road, and in less than a minute, they spotted an old fishing shack at the end of it.