Knockdown

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  It was too late for any patients to be showing up. The clinic offered after-hours emergency services, but clients had to call first, and McIntire had set his voicemail message to say that he had been called away.

  The man who got out of the car didn’t have a sick dog or cat with him. Instead, he was alone as he walked toward the house, a well-built, middle-aged man in a dark suit.

  McIntire was sure this nocturnal visit had something to do with Barry and Jake and the blonde in the other room. He already had a small Smith & Wesson revolver in a belly holster under his shirt. He opened a drawer, took out a 1911, and stuck it behind his belt at the small of his back. He didn’t have to check to make sure it was loaded. He knew it was.

  He opened the door as the man stepped up on the porch. He didn’t have either gun in his hand, but he could draw them fast enough if he needed to.

  “That’s far enough, friend,” McIntire said. “What can I do for you?” He added, “The clinic is closed.”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that,” the man said.

  “Kind of late in the evening to come calling if there’s no emergency.”

  The man smiled.

  “Who said there was no emergency? I believe that the reason I’m here qualifies.”

  “Why don’t you explain what that is?” McIntire suggested.

  “I’ve come for Gretchen Rogers.”

  The man must have seen McIntire’s hand move instinctively toward the belly gun. He held up his own hand in a conciliatory gesture.

  “There’s no need for that,” he went on. “Listen, Dr. McIntire—”

  “You know who I am.”

  “I know a great many things. That’s my job. My name is Mitchell Cavanaugh. I’m with the Justice Department.”

  “So what you’re saying is . . . ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help’?” McIntire shook his head. “That doesn’t resonate with nearly as many people as it used to, Mr. Cavanaugh. At least half the country stopped believing that a long time ago.”

  “Well, I can’t be held responsible for what people think, but I know the truth.” Cavanaugh nodded toward the house. “Gretchen Rogers is in there, and I need to speak with her.”

  “You believe she’s here because—”

  With a testy note of impatience in his voice now, Cavanaugh said, “Because I saw Barry and Jake Rivers bring her here earlier today.”

  McIntire cocked his head a little to the side.

  “Satellite surveillance? Or drones? You do use drones in American airspace now, don’t you?”

  Cavanaugh waved the question away and said, “That doesn’t matter now. Look, Doctor, I realize that you and Barry Rivers go way back—”

  “That’s putting it mildly.”

  As if he hadn’t even heard McIntire’s interruption, Cavanaugh continued, “But that doesn’t really matter. I’m here on official government business, and I need to speak with Ms. Rogers. You know that she works for the Department of Homeland Security?”

  “I know that she did.”

  “She still does, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t know what lies those two traitors told you, but Ms. Rogers isn’t in trouble. I just want to help her, but to do that, I have to talk to her. Technically speaking, I am her boss, you know.”

  McIntire wished Barry or Jake were here. He didn’t know what to do. Was this man Cavanaugh one of the group that wanted them dead, or did he really have Gretchen’s best interests at heart?

  “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll go see if she’s willing to talk to you.”

  Under the circumstances, he didn’t see any reason not to admit that Gretchen was here. Obviously, Cavanaugh and his people had been tracking Barry and Jake and knew what they had done.

  Cavanaugh nodded and said, “All right. But just so you know, I’m not accustomed to being left standing on somebody’s front porch in the middle of the night.”

  “And this isn’t just anybody’s front porch,” McIntire snapped. He closed the door in Cavanaugh’s face and got a little satisfaction out of that.

  He went back to the room where he had left Gretchen and opened the door. As he stepped in, he caught sight of something from the corner of his eye and suddenly crouched as he reached for the gun at his waist.

  He stopped short, and so did Gretchen, with one of the IV stands poised to drive its feet into his face. She was pale, washed-out looking, and none too steady on her feet, but fierce determination burned in her eyes.

  “Good grief, what are you doing out of bed?” McIntire exclaimed. “You shouldn’t have taken that IV loose.”

  “Wasn’t sure . . . who was gonna come through the door,” she said. She swayed, and he reached out to take hold of her arm so she wouldn’t fall.

  “There’s a man out there who wants to talk to you,” McIntire said. “He claims he’s one of your bosses. A man named Cavanaugh.”

  Gretchen’s eyes widened with shock, and McIntire knew he’d been right not to trust Cavanaugh.

  “No,” Gretchen began. “You can’t—”

  That was when something crashed through the window, followed by a blinding flash and an earsplitting explosion of sound.

  CHAPTER 57

  Pain shot through Gretchen as McIntire lost his grip on her arm and she fell to her knees. Her head rang like she was trapped inside a giant bell, and she couldn’t see a thing. A part of her brain still worked well enough that she was aware a flash-bang grenade had just gone off, but mostly she was just in agony and wanted to collapse cringing onto the floor.

  She wouldn’t allow herself to do that. Outrage stiffened her spine and galvanized her muscles. She made it back halfway to her feet, but then someone grabbed her from behind and jerked her the rest of the way up. Her arms were pinned to her sides. She tried to struggle, but the strength she had summoned rapidly deserted her. She sagged in her captor’s grip.

  As stunned as she was, it was difficult to say how much time passed before she began being able to see and hear a little. As her vision gradually cleared, the first thing she saw was Dr. Caleb McIntire lying face-down on the floor and not moving.

  Even though she had just met him, horror went through her at the thought that he was dead. She knew his medical attention probably had saved her life.

  Then her eyesight sharpened a little more, and she could tell that he was breathing. That was a relief, anyway, although how long either of them would survive was very much in doubt.

  Men in tactical gear had crowded into the room. Gretchen didn’t know how they had gotten there, but it didn’t matter. One of them held her while a couple of others stood by with their guns trained on McIntire in case he regained consciousness and tried anything.

  She took that in instantly since being observant had become second nature to her, but most of her attention was centered on the man who stood in front of her with an annoying smirk on his ruddy face—Mitchell Cavanaugh.

  “Can you hear me, Gretchen?” he asked.

  “I can hear you,” she said. Her voice sounded strange to her inside her head. “I just don’t like you. Or trust you.”

  “Well, that’s where you’re making a mistake. Because, you see, I’m the only way out of this mess you’ve gotten yourself into.”

  “My way out? Ha! You sent men to kill me!”

  Cavanaugh shrugged and said, “That’s regrettable. However, Barry and Jake Rivers were the primary targets. I’ll admit, you might have been collateral damage—”

  She tried to surge forward as her lips pulled back from her teeth in a savage grimace, but the grip on her was too strong.

  “But now the situation has changed,” Cavanaugh went on. “Since you’re not with those two traitors anymore, there’s no reason you have to come to any harm. In fact, I believe we might even be able to salvage your career in government service.”

  “The only traitor here is you!”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way. It’s a shame you believe all the lies those two have fed you. I want only what’
s best for this country . . . and I know who’s best qualified to decide what that is.”

  “And that’s not the common people, right?”

  Cavanaugh cocked his head to the side and said, “You have to admit, they don’t have the best track record over the past two hundred and fifty years, do they?”

  Even wracked with pain, Gretchen saw that it was useless trying to argue with Cavanaugh’s smug elitism. She glared at him and asked, “What is it you want from me, anyway?”

  “Tell me where Barry and Jake are.”

  Gretchen shook her head slowly.

  “I don’t know. And that’s the truth.”

  “Then you know where they were going.”

  “No, I don’t,” she declared. “I don’t have any way of knowing. I was unconscious when they brought me here. If you were spying on them with some sort of eye in the sky, you ought to know that. I’d been shot by one of those flunkeys you sent after us.”

  “You mean those dedicated federal agents Jake and Barry Rivers murdered?”

  “We were just defending ourselves!”

  “Careful,” Cavanaugh said. “You don’t want to say too much and incriminate yourself.”

  A look of sly, evil anticipation appeared in his eyes for a fraction of a second as he said that. In that moment, Gretchen knew that any promises Cavanaugh made regarding getting her out of trouble and saving her job were just lies. He was only trying to get her to tell him what he wanted to know, and once she did, he would kill her.

  She wasn’t going to give Mitchell Cavanaugh what he wanted. She might be almost completely powerless right now, but she could still deny him that much.

  “Go to hell, Cavanaugh,” she rasped. “I’m not going to cooperate with you, no matter what you do.”

  “Is that so?” He reached under his suit coat and took out a small, flat, semi-automatic pistol. As he pointed the gun at the back of McIntire’s head, he went on, “Even if it means saving the life of the good doctor here?”

  Gretchen’s head was starting to spin. As McIntire had said, she’d lost a lot of blood, and it was going to be a while before she recovered from that—if she ever did. The way things were going, that looked doubtful.

  “I don’t think . . . the doctor would want me . . . to betray his friend . . .”

  Cavanaugh sighed, shook his head, and started to take up the slack on the trigger.

  “Wait!” Gretchen said. McIntire had told her about the terrorist attack on Long Island. Jake and Barry might not have survived it. If they hadn’t, then Cavanaugh couldn’t hurt them anymore.

  If they had survived, they would be on the move already, trying to figure out what to do next. That meant they probably weren’t on Long Island anymore.

  She had to swallow a couple of times before she could speak again. She was still having trouble because her mouth was so dry. But she managed to say, “They were going to New York. One of Barry’s contacts told him . . . that something funny was going on . . . at a railroad station on Long Island. He and Jake . . . were going to check it out. That’s all I know . . . I swear.”

  “A railroad station on Long Island? What station?”

  Gretchen made herself look like she was trying to think. After a moment she said, “Baghdad . . . No. Babylon. That was it. Babylon.”

  “You haven’t heard anything about Babylon station this evening?”

  “I just woke up a little while ago!” she said. “I’ve been shot, remember? I . . . I don’t know what’s going on here.” She moaned and let herself sag even more, trying to sell the idea that she was telling the truth. “It’s all so crazy . . . I just can’t understand anymore . . .”

  Cavanaugh looked intently at her for a few seconds, then jerked his head toward the hospital bed.

  “Help her lie down,” he told the man holding her.

  “Thank you,” Gretchen said with a big sigh of relief. “I was about to pass out again.”

  With the help of Cavanaugh’s goon, she climbed back onto the bed.

  “I probably ought to reattach that IV I took loose,” she said.

  “Oh, I don’t know that that’s necessary,” Cavanaugh said with the smirk reappearing on his face. He swung the gun up, away from McIntire, so that it pointed in Gretchen’s general direction. “I’ve decided that I believe you, Agent Rogers. You’ve told me everything you know.”

  A ball of ice started to form in Gretchen’s belly. She said, “Does that mean you don’t need me around anymore?”

  “That’s right. You . . . or the good doctor. It makes more sense to dispose of both of you and then arrange things so that it looks as if, say, a gas explosion destroyed this house and the adjoining clinic.” Cavanaugh made an eloquent gesture. “Regrettable, to be sure, but for the best overall.”

  “You’re a monster,” Gretchen said through clenched teeth. She looked at the three men in tactical gear, who stood in the room with their faces carefully expressionless. She demanded of them, “Are you going to let him just get away with murder like this?”

  “It’s for the country’s good, ma’am,” one of them said. “Mr. Cavanaugh wouldn’t say so if it weren’t true.”

  Gretchen stared at him in disbelief. Cavanaugh put his gun away and stepped toward the bed.

  “This won’t take long,” he said, smiling. “And if you’ll just cooperate, it won’t even be that unpleasant. I’ll just take that pillow and hold it over your face—”

  “You can’t blow up the clinic,” Gretchen said. “There are bound to be animals over there, sick animals—”

  Cavanaugh stopped and frowned at her, as if she had just started pleading with him in a foreign language.

  “Animals?” he repeated. “I don’t care what happens to a bunch of stupid dogs and cats!”

  He lunged at her, the suave mask gone now.

  Gretchen grabbed the IV stand on that side of the bed, shoving it into his path. He stumbled over it, cursed, tried to bat it out of the way.

  The other three men started to leap forward to help him, but gunshots suddenly blasted out somewhere nearby.

  “Go help the others!” Cavanaugh told his men. “I’ll take care of this bi—”

  Gretchen pushed herself halfway up from the bed, swung a leg off, and kicked him in the belly before he could finish what he was saying. He bent over, cursed, and slammed the IV stand out of the way with his forearm. Lunging forward, he wrapped both hands around her neck and shoved her down on the bed. She tried to gasp for air, but nothing could get through her windpipe with Cavanaugh throttling her like that.

  “Just for that, you can die painfully,” he rasped as he bore down on her.

  Smothering her with a pillow would have left her without any telltale marks, but since they were going to blow the place up anyway, she supposed that didn’t really matter. She fought back as he choked her, but she was so weak from her wound that the blows she struck with both fists were pretty feeble. Cavanaugh just ignored them.

  But those gunshots meant one thing to Gretchen: Jake and Barry were back. The three men in tactical gear had rushed out of the room to help the rest of Cavanaugh’s henchmen, but that wouldn’t be enough. Jake and Barry would take care of them, Gretchen was sure of that.

  And then they would take care of Mitchell Cavanaugh, she told herself as her consciousness started to fade. She could cling to that hope on her way out of this life. No matter what happened, Cavanaugh wouldn’t get away with it . . .

  CHAPTER 58

  Jake felt weariness gripping him as he slowed down to turn from the highway onto the lane leading to McIntire’s house and clinic. It had been an incredibly long, violent day, and even though he still had strength and stamina to spare if he needed them, he was starting to wear down.

  Sometimes he didn’t have any idea how Barry still did it at his age. But Barry, in most respects, seemed ageless . . .

  “No, don’t turn in,” Barry said suddenly in an urgent voice. “Keep going.”

  Without thinking too
much about it, Jake took his foot off the brake and put it on the gas again. He hadn’t slowed down much, hardly enough to be noticeable.

  “Drive on past and find a place to stop where the pickup will be out of sight,” Barry said.

  They continued along the dark road for another quarter of a mile until Jake spotted a clump of trees with a big enough gap in it for the pickup. He turned and drove through the opening. He had to force the vehicle through some underbrush and was sorry that McIntire’s pickup was probably getting quite a few scratches on it.

  When he had penetrated about fifty yards into the trees, Barry said, “That ought to be far enough.”

  Jake eased the pickup to a stop, killed the lights and the engine, and looked over at his uncle.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Something tip you off?”

  “Yeah. The doc.” Barry held up his phone, which had a text message displayed on the screen. It was nothing but a long line of exclamation points. “An alarm signal we’ve used before.”

  “So we need to go in discreetly.”

  “That’s right. But we have to get in there so we can find out what’s going on.”

  Gretchen, Jake thought. She could be in danger. Barry was right that they needed to be careful, but at the same time, a part of him wanted to go charging in with all guns blazing.

  Just in case that turned out to be necessary, Jake checked both of his pistols, making sure the magazines were loaded and that he had loaded extras ready. Barry did the same.

  Then they started through the trees toward McIntire’s place, moving carefully and quietly—but not too slowly. They had no idea how much danger McIntire and Gretchen might be in.

  Neither of them wanted to get there too late.

  Although the vegetation was thick in the area, a wide space around the house and clinic had been cleared. That was because the life McIntire had led had gotten him into the habit of caution, Jake thought. It would be more difficult for anyone to sneak up on the place that way.

  After a few minutes, Jake and Barry reached a spot where they could crouch down, part the brush, and peer through the narrow gap they’d created.